


The Only Constant in Life

by frankiesin



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Also I Just Love Rain, Angst, Character Death, Cheating, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Drug Addiction, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Rain as a Metaphor, Unrequited Love, Wakes & Funerals, tragic backstories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2018-11-18 17:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankiesin/pseuds/frankiesin
Summary: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.""The only thing that is constant is change."Ryan Ross loved her best friend until he kicked her out of his life. Dallon Weekes loved his boss from the moment the man offered him a job. The two meet at their lost love's funeral, and figure out how to carry on from there. There's a lot of baggage, and tragedy, and sometimes the only option is to just. Keep. Going.





	1. The Man in the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the angstiest thing I've written in the past few years. This used to be the standard for what I wrote, but then bandom happened and I started writing cute little high school fluff things. 
> 
> Anyway, I think I've tagged everything. You'll probably cry a bit (I have, twice, while writing this story), and you might want to yell at me. Yelling is encouraged. It's therapeutic, or so I've heard.

The waves crashed gently against the shore as a gust of wind blew through the crowd, kicking up sand and droplets of water. Someone was quietly sobbing. Ryan guessed that it was Spencer’s mother. She’d been crying off and on since the ceremony started. Ryan hadn’t acknowledged her. She wasn’t sure how her presence would be received by everyone else. She was the black sheep, the one who had dragged Spencer into things he should have never been involved in, and yet, she always came back. Ryan was like a cockroach. Diseased, unkillable, unwanted, constant. 

 

The clouds above the crowd were a dark grey, tainting the shore with their gloom. Ryan had left her shoes in the taxi that brought her here from her hotel room, and she squeezed her bare toes into the sand to ground herself. Everything around her was a shade of grey. It was all monotonous, and depressing. The ceremony was going slowly, and there were too many members of Spencer’s family standing around and dabbing their eyes with the sleeves of their jackets. 

 

Why couldn’t Spencer have timed this better, so that the beach wouldn’t be so empty and cold? It was April, and the resort behind them was deserted. No one wanted to be out here in this weather. There were better places to hold such a ceremony, but no, Spencer’s family had to honour his childhood dream of becoming a part of the sea. 

 

_ “Ryan, come on!” Spencer shouted from where he was waist deep into the ocean water. Ryan had barely gotten her toes wet. She was still wearing a shirt, not ready to expose herself to the people on the beach. “It’s not cold, come on!” _

 

_ Ryan smiled, squinting in the hot June sun. She never understood how Spencer could be so energised about the beach. It was just hot, and sandy, and there were a bunch of people who glared at him and Ryan for being too loud.  _

 

_ Spencer grew impatient, waiting for Brendon, and splashed back through the waves to where she was still standing. He tugged at her arm, pulling her in towards the water, and Ryan relented. It was summer, and she was happy, really. She could go out into the water with Spencer, and the two of them could make up stories where they swam across the Atlantic to meet the queen of England.  _

 

_ It was the summer of 1994. Ryan was eight years old, and for one brief week, she was the happiest she could ever be, splashing around in the ocean with her best friend. Then she went home with her parents, and a month later, after nights full of screaming and the sound of shattering glass, Ryan’s mom sat her down and said that she and Ryan’s dad were getting a divorce. And that night, a humid, sticky night in late July, was the last night of Ryan’s childhood. _

 

The priest stopped talking and stepped down from the podium that had been set up on the shore. Spencer’s mom stood up, her hands shaking, and walked up to take his place. Her eyes were wet, and she didn’t notice Ryan sitting in a chair at the back of the audience. She unfolded the paper she’d brought up with her, and started retelling the story of Spencer’s life. Ryan didn’t cry. She’d lived through everything Ginger was saying. She’d seen Spencer grow up, and she knew him better than most people. 

 

She’d loved Spencer when he was still the awkward overweight kid who got excluded from everyone’s group projects and never got invited anywhere. She’d loved him later, when he never washed his hair and the two of them would take buses across state lines to see their favourite bands in concert. Ryan loved Spencer when he was nineteen and kept getting into fights with guys twice his size because they were calling him and his friends fags. She loved him when he was twenty-two, bearded and in love with someone else. 

 

She loved him most when he came crawling to her shitty apartment above the Walgreens downtown, drunk or high or both, and passed out on the mattress she called a bed. Ryan loved Spencer when he was gross, when he was beautiful, when he was a mess, and when he was the happiest man in the world. Nothing he did could ever change that, but she still lost him. 

 

Ginger finished her eulogy, not once mentioning Ryan’s name despite how close her son had been with Ryan before they fell apart. She dabbed at her cheeks and stepped down, returning to her second husband, her two daughters, and her step-son. 

 

The man on the other side of Ginger’s husband stood up. He was holding the urn, a plain, silver jar that was dull against the grey background. Rain started to fall as he got up on the podium, resting the urn on the edge. There was a horrible, vile part of Ryan that really wanted it to tip over, and for the remains of her best friend to get scattered in the sand, lost and unretrievable. 

 

The urn remained upright, and the man with soft, dark brown hair and big, sad eyes looked at it like it was really Spencer. He had a gold band on his left hand. Ryan didn’t know his name, but she knew who he was. She knew why he got to talk about Spencer while Ryan had to sneak into the back row and bite her tongue. 

 

“I met Spencer ten years ago, when we were both taking a gap year after high school,” he said. His voice was wet, and the rain was coming down steadily around all of them. If there was a God, he was also mourning Spencer. The man wearing Spencer’s ring wiped his face, and kept going. “We were both working the same job, at an Abercrombie store in the mall. Spencer hated it, and I didn’t have enough money for the clothes, so we both got fired about four months in for being bad employees. And by that point, we’d bonded over shared apathy so we became friends and started thinking about what we could do with our free time.”

 

Ryan knew this story. She hated it. It was such a cliche, something straight out of a Nicholas Sparks romance novel, except both characters were men and neither of them died during the duration of the novel. No, the death came later, on a mountain road up in West Virginia, when it was the dead of night and no one knew that Spencer was in the middle of a downward spiral. 

 

_ “I’m starting a bakery,” Spencer said. He was sitting in Ryan’s dorm, on the floor, and there were several joints sitting half-rolled between the two of them.  _

 

_ Ryan shook her head. “That’s a shitty idea. How’re you even going to pay for it?” _

 

_ “College money,” Spencer said. “Look, I know you and my mom and everyone else thinks I need to go to some fancy ass school and get a business degree or whatever bullshit, but I don’t. I’m good at baking, and Brendon’s good at coffee and being friendly, and we know enough people to get it started. I promise.” _

 

_ “What do you need from me, then, if you’ve got Brendon?” Ryan snapped. She didn’t mean to snap, but she was jealous of Brendon, and how he’d gotten Spencer to fall for him just by breathing. Brendon didn't know Spencer like Ryan did. Brendon wasn’t there when Spencer was calling Ryan every night, freaking out because he’d caught his dad cheating on his mom and he didn’t know what to do with the information. Ryan’s parents had gotten divorced first, so obviously Ryan knew what to do about shitty parents who couldn’t make things work.  _

 

_ Spencer rolled his eyes. “Come on, Ry. I’m always going to need you. You’re my best girl.” _

 

_ Ryan wished that meant something. With Brendon in the picture, Spencer’s words were meaningless. He only had eyes for that small, energetic, puppy-eyed boy. Ryan was just a smear on Spencer’s past.  _

 

The rain was pouring down, soaking everyone to the bone. The waves were louder, but they were fighting against the wind and against Brendon’s voice. Brendon could have been crying, but Ryan would never know. She still wasn’t crying. She was numb. She’d cry later, and then she’d cover it all with drugs because she never learned from other people’s mistakes. She’d lost her father to booze, but fuck that guy. She’d lost Spencer to Brendon, and then again to drugs. It didn’t matter. Ryan only had her mother left to lose, and she hadn’t seen that woman since she left for college years ago. 

 

Brendon finished up his speech, and then handed the urn to Ginger. The two of them walked together into the sea, and poured the remains of Spencer James Smith into the ocean. And then he was gone, forever. There was nothing left of Ryan’s best friend except for the words that people said about him, and only half of what people said was true. Spencer was a saint, but he was not perfect.

 

Ryan stood, her feet falling into the wet sand and getting stuck there. It was like the ocean didn’t want her to leave, but she had no reason to stay. Spencer was the only reason she’d cared about the beach. Now that he was gone, she could retreat back to the urban life she came from, and dissolve back into the grime and corruption that came from living with too many people. 

 

“Hey, excuse me,” a voice said, slicing through the sound of the storm. Ryan stopped, turned around. Her hair whipped around in the wind, slapping her across the cheek. There, wobbling on a pair of crutches, was a man with eyes brighter than Spencer’s. He was tall, with a sad smile and soaked hair falling into his eyes. He was also missing a leg. He waved a crutch at Ryan. “Sorry, I hate to ask this, but I can’t fucking walk on this shit, and I don’t want to get stuck out here. Can you give me a hand?”

 

“I can try,” she offered, keeping her voice as shrill as she could manage. She felt like she was sixteen again, sneaking into a club and trying to pass herself off as one of the other girls who got free drinks and kisses from older men. She’d never been that girl; her chest was always too flat and her jaw too sharp to pass as a woman. 

 

She walked over to the man and offered him her arm. Together, the two of them stumbled through the sand and up the stairs that led to the resort condos where most of the guests were staying. There was supposed to be a reception tomorrow, but Ryan didn’t know if the storm would allow for it. She wasn’t staying here; she had a motel room booked about ten miles down the highway, and her one suitcase was sitting there, waiting for her to return. 

 

“I’m Dallon, by the way,” he said as the two of them walked around the outdoor pool deck. Someone had taken the covers off of the pools, and the clear blue water was splashing from the force of the rain. Dallon’s other crutch slipped away, and he swore loudly as Ryan grabbed his waist to keep him from falling. Dallon righted himself and smiled at her. “Thanks. I’m not used to these things yet. They’re a pain in the ass to deal with, and everyone keeps asking where my leg went.”

 

“Where did it go?” Ryan asked. She was too sober to be nice, and she couldn’t light a cigarette in this rain anyway. “I’m Ryan, Spencer and I used to be friends.”

 

“I lost it in an accident,” Dallon said. 

 

“Sucks,” Ryan said. She would feel bad for the guy, but she didn’t know him and her feet were starting to prune up. Luckily, the cover of the parking garage was right in front of them, with only a locked gate keeping them out. Ryan sighed. “Fuck. How’re we supposed to get in?”

 

“Well, There are stairs up to the first floor, but I’m not supposed to be using stairs yet,” Dallon said. He leaned himself forward so that his stomach was pressed up against the gate. “Technically, I shouldn’t even be walking, but I was not about to wheel myself across any fucking sand. Oh, hey, there’s a lock on this side. That’s convenient.”

 

Dallon reached around and messed with something on the other side of the gate before it swung open and he had to catch himself from falling forward again. He stood up and hobbled through the gate, holding it open with one crutch for Ryan. Ryan shook her head and followed him through. She wasn’t sure where she was going or why she was still following this guy. He was off the beach. He didn’t need her anymore. 

 

“So, now what?” Ryan asked, crossing her arms. She rubbed her foot against the carpeted floor, grimacing at the feeling of wet sand caught between her toes. Outside, the rain was still coming down, and Ryan shivered a little from the wind. “Do you need anything else, or can I call a taxi and go back to my hotel room now? I’d like to get out of this wet mess.”

 

“I guess I’m good on my own,” Dallon said. “I’ve got elevators now, but I can wait here while you call a taxi? If that’s okay with you. I don’t want you to get stranded anywhere.”

 

“I’m not a fifties housewife,” Ryan snapped. “I won’t fall over and die of pneumonia if you leave me alone for two minutes.”

 

As if to somehow prove her point, she opened her purse and pulled out her pack of cigarettes, sticking one in her mouth defiantly as she searched around for a lighter. She had an accidental collection of cheap lighters, because she was always misplacing them and she had to keep going down to the Walgreens to buy another two dollar lighter. She never had to buy lighter fuel, though, which was nice. Ryan had never been good with flammable items, and she’d have hated to set her apartment on fire because she was high one night and decided playing with fuel and matches would be a good idea.

 

Her lighter wasn’t in her bag. It was just makeup, a tiny, warped composition notebook, crumpled up receipts, and a tiny baggie of cocaine, buried in the bottom of it all. Ryan tossed her pack of cigarettes back in. “You wouldn’t happen to have a lighter, would you?”

 

“I do, actually,” Dallon said, and pulled a metal lighter out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It was tarnished, and there were a few dents on it, but the thing that made it stand out was the name engraved on the side.  _ Spencer James Smith (the fifth!) _ . In Spencer’s shitty tree-carving handwriting, too. Ryan almost dropped the thing when she noticed, but she managed to recover and open it up, lighting her cigarette. 

 

She closed the lighter and took a long drag from her cigarette, making sure to cover Spencer’s name with her thumb. “Did you want one?”

 

“I don’t smoke,” Dallon said. 

 

“Then why do you have his--why do you have a lighter?” Ryan asked. Spencer had never smoked cigarettes, claiming that they smelled disgusting and that he’d rather sleep in a trash bin than put a cigarette between his teeth. Ryan, who had done both, disagreed. The stench of cigarettes became comforting after a long enough time. She had always wanted to call Spencer out on his hypocrisy, because Brendon smoked, and if Spencer and Brendon were fucking, then surely Spencer smelled the nicotine on his boyfriend. 

 

_ His husband _ , Ryan’s brain supplied. Ryan ignored it. 

 

“I used to smoke,” Dallon said. He sounded like he was lying. Ryan didn’t care enough to call him out on it. “I’ve been trying to quit, but after what happened with Spence… I don’t know. I couldn’t get rid of his lighter. So, here we are.”

 

“Here we are,” Ryan echoed, smoke billowing around her like a cloud. She still hadn’t called for a taxi. Ryan pressed the cigarette between her lips and pulled out her phone to call for a ride. But, right there at the top of the screen was a grey and black warning, claiming that tornadoes and floods were coming their way and that roads were being shut down. Ryan unlocked her phone anyway and pulled up a traffic map, hoping that this section of Myrtle Beach would be spared from the worst of the storm. 

 

“Ah, shit,” Ryan said. “We’re right in the middle of it.”

 

“Of what?” Dallon asked. 

 

“There’s a flood and tornado warning, and some of the roads are closed,” Ryan said. “I’m stuck here for who knows how long.”

 

“I have extra clothes and can brew some tea, if you’re interested?” Dallon offered. Ryan didn’t have any other options besides staying down here in the parking garage and smoking her way through her only pack of cigarettes, so she nodded and followed Dallon to the elevators. The elevators were warm, almost to the point of being stuffy and uncomfortable, and Ryan couldn’t stop smoking. She needed something in her mouth, something to shut her up so she wouldn’t start talking to this Dallon guy. They didn’t know each other. They didn’t need to know each other. It would be easier if Ryan didn’t speak. 

 

_ Ryan was twelve, and her body was starting to change. She was getting taller, and her voice was getting deeper, and she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror without wanting to throw up. She was disgusting. Her hands were too thin and bony and her hips were too narrow and nothing ever fit her. She wasn’t looking forward to the summer, because she’d be trapped with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, and she hated both of them.  _

 

_ The boyfriend’s name was Jared, and he was weirdly obsessed with Ryan. She’d thought, at the beginning, that he was just trying to be a better father figure than Ryan’s dad, but that wasn’t it. No, Jared was just another disgusting, vile man who existed only to make Ryan’s life worse. He’d been dating Ryan’s mother for two years now, and it had been a little over eighteen months since he first started fucking Ryan. It hurt, because Ryan was small and skinny and still a child, but there was nothing Ryan could do about it.  _

 

_ Her mom and her mom’s rapist of a boyfriend was still better than her dad. He’d started drinking the moment the divorce papers were signed, and he hadn’t stopped since. Ryan had to hide out at Spence’s house for an entire week before going to her mom’s house, so that the bruises and the cuts would heal and her mom wouldn’t ask questions. Ryan had two options in life: get hit or get fucked. She tried to balance them out so she wouldn’t get too sick of either one.  _

 

_ It was June. It was hot. Ryan couldn’t keep herself covered even though she wanted to wrap a blanket around her shoulders and disappear into a formless blob. She, her mom, and Jared were at the resort in Myrtle Beach again, and Spencer and his family were next door, unpacking and probably enjoying themselves. Ryan was locked in the bathroom, throwing up.  _

 

_ She couldn’t handle it. Everything was too much but she couldn’t say anything because no one would believe her. She couldn’t tell anyone what her parents were like, because she’d get taken away from them and from Spencer and shipped off to some orphanage where she was really, truly alone.  _

 

_ There was a knock on the bathroom door. Ryan covered her mouth, breathing in the stench of her own stomach bile and trying not to sob. Don’t be Jared, don’t be Jared, don’t be Jared.  _

 

_ “Ryan? Spencer’s here,” her mom said through the door. “He wanted to know if you wanted to go down to the beach with him.” _

 

_ Ryan swallowed back her stomach bile and stood up, wiping her face with a towel. “Tell him I’ll be out in a second. I was using the bathroom.” _

 

_ Thank God for Spencer Smith, who would drag Ryan away from her family at any chance he got. He didn’t know everything, because Ryan didn’t want to scare him, but he knew enough to give a shit. That was all Ryan needed then, was for someone to care about her. She loved Spencer, as much as a twelve year old girl in the body of a boy could. He was everything to her.  _

 

Dallon’s condo was smaller than the ones that Ryan and Spencer had used when they came here with their families. It was strange, like walking into an abandoned house only to see that she’d forgotten what everything looked like. There was a wicker chair in the corner, and the kitchen smelled vaguely of something burning. The entire space smelt like something was burning, but not anything Ryan had ever smelt before. She wrinkled her nose. “What the fuck is that smell?”

 

“No idea,” Dallon said. He was facing away from Ryan, and poking at the edge of the coffee table with his crutch. “I think it smelled weird when I came in. Maybe the previous person was a smoker. I don’t know.”

 

“I’ve been smoking since I was sixteen,” Ryan said. “There is not a cigarette brand in the world that smells like this.”

 

“Then I have no idea, because it’s not weed,” Dallon said. He must have met Spencer through Brendon, because Ryan had no recollection of him at all. Spencer and Ryan had shared weed all the time before they fell apart and Ryan left Spencer’s life. Spencer had only gotten worse after he stopped saying Ryan was his friend. Ryan had gotten worse, too, but she knew it was coming. She was the genetic cocktail of two people who were absolute wrecks. Failure as a person was her only option. 

 

“Where can I change into something dry?” Ryan asked, stubbing out her cigarette on the counter. It wasn’t her condo. She didn’t care. 

 

“I’ll let you have the bathroom, in case you want to fix up your makeup,” Dallon said. He leaned one of his crutches against the wall and opened the door to the only bedroom in the condo. Ryan squinted into the darkness of the bedroom. It faced out towards the beach, and there were sliding doors that led out to a balcony. There was a towel out on the balcony, but it was soaked through and flapping pathetically in the wind. Dallon grabbed his crutch and leaned back against the door. “Grab whatever you need. I got here early yesterday, so I had time to unpack.”

 

Ryan nodded, and walked into the bedroom. It too smelled like burnt something, but stronger now. Ryan made a face and opened the closet, looking through all of the clothes Dallon had brought with him. There were a lot. Either Dallon planned to stay here for a while, or he was just one of those people who overpacked. He was a better person than Ryan, either way, because Ryan only had enough clothes to pack around the alcohol so that the bottles didn’t break. 

 

She grabbed a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and headed into the bathroom, making sure to lock the door behind her. Ryan turned her back to the mirror and stripped down to nothing but her bra and underwear. It had been a long time since she’d been in this building, stripping down in one of the many identical bathrooms and trying not to look at her own body. She didn’t have any full length mirrors in the house in Philly. It was easier that way. She didn’t have to think about the deformities, all the places that had been touched too early, if she couldn’t see them. 

 

Once dressed, Ryan turned around to face herself down. There she was, in the flourescent lights, her jawline standing out and her makeup running down her face from where the rain had destroyed it. Ryan took a deep breath and lit a new cigarette. She still had Spencer’s lighter. She was considering stealing it from Dallon, because he didn’t deserve anything of Spencer’s. Ryan didn’t have morals anyway. She might as well take the lighter.

 

_ “I can’t believe you smoke,” Spencer said, even though he was sitting right next to Ryan and she had a cigarette between her fingers. It was August, only a week away from school starting back up, and the two of them were sitting on top of the jungle gym at their elementary school playground. Spencer was dating a girl named Haley, Ryan was fucking a girl named Jac, and everything was close to perfect. _

 

_ “I can’t believe you’re still a virgin,” Ryan said. “You’ve been dating that bitch for over a year, Spence. What the fuck are you two doing if you’re not having sex.” _

 

_ “Haley wants to wait,” Spencer said, like it was the clearest thing in the world. “And unlike some people, I don’t need to have sex all the time.” _

 

_ It wasn’t Ryan’s fault that she couldn’t do anything but fuck people. She freaked out at the first hint of commitment. She didn’t see why anyone would want to date her. She was fucked up. Her step-dad fucked her in her mom’s bed whenever her mom was out at work and she and Jared were alone in the house. Ryan’s dad was an alcoholic, and had no problem reminding Ryan that she was a worthless tranny fag who would get nowhere in life and end up dead in a ditch.  _

 

_ Ryan didn’t say any of that to Spencer. He was happy with his cute little relationship. Ryan thought it was disgusting. She flicked ash off the end of her cigarette. “Sex isn’t a big deal. Just get over yourself and fuck her already.” _

 

Ryan turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face, letting her cigarette sit against the counter. She wouldn’t think about Spencer, and how he’d been so willing to love anyone except Ryan. Ryan was just that fucked up, apparently, that even Spencer couldn’t find something in her worth loving. She rubbed a towel across her face and took another drag from her cigarette. Ryan knew she needed to pace herself if she was going to make it through the storm, but she couldn’t stop. She needed something, and she wasn’t about to snort a line of coke off a stranger’s bathroom sink.

 

Except… could she? The counter was clean enough, and she had a few receipts in her bag that were crisp enough to work. Ryan took a final drag from her cigarette, stubbed it out on the bar of soap, and pulled out a receipt and her only thing of coke. She tucked her hair back behind her ears so it wouldn’t get in the way, drew out two lines, and bent down, inhaling them both. 

 

It had been a while since she’d done something that impulsive. She rubbed her nose and tossed the receipt in the trash, and then pulled out her makeup. Ryan didn’t pay much attention as she applied her face, because she wasn’t doing anything special. Just enough so that Dallon wouldn’t catch on and realise she was trans. Ryan couldn’t deal with that, not today. She just wanted to get so far out of it that nothing felt real anymore, and then go out and make questionable decisions. 

 

Ryan tossed her lipstick back into her purse and unlocked the door out to Dallon’s bedroom. He was sitting on the bed, turned away from Ryan and completely shirtless. There was an angry red cut crawling up his lower back and stopping just under his shoulder blade. It was stitched up and looked rather new, and there were a few smaller cuts around it. Those were mostly healed, but the injury was still large and ugly. 

 

Other than that, though, Dallon had a nice body. There was a bit of a curve to his waist, and his shoulders were arched inward, but his skin looked smooth where it wasn’t injured and his arms were nicely defined. Ryan tilted her head, not meaning to stare but not self-conscious enough to stop. 

 

Dallon leaned around, presumably to grab his crutches from where he’d leaned them against the end of the bed, and saw Ryan. He hunched over, covering his chest with both arms, and as his face turned red he shouted, “what the fuck how long have you been here?!”

 

“Not long, sorry for staring,” Ryan said nonchalantly. 

 

Dallon hunched further over, and winced. He was probably pulling on the stitches on his back. “Get out, what the fuck. I’m naked.”

 

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Ryan shrugged, but she walked past Dallon and into the living room anyway. Whatever. If he was going to be weird about his body, who was Ryan to judge. She was weird about her own body, but she had an excuse. She was trans; her body wasn’t the right fucking one. Ryan had never understood how cis people could have body image issues. At least they were in the right body, with the right fuckng parts and all that. Ryan couldn’t even tell if she was pretty, because she had a dick and a flat chest and too many masculine traits. 

 

Ryan was bored. Dallon was still in his room, being self-conscious about his nipples or whatever his fucking problem was, and Ryan had nothing to do with herself. 

 

She walked over to the kitchen area, opening drawers and cabinets to see if there was anything of interest in them. Nothing. Just some instant coffee mix and an obscene amount of tea bags. Ryan opened the fridge, hoping for alcohol, but there wasn’t any. She was actually going to die here, alone with a fucking weirdo who still cared about girls seeing him naked. 

 

Spencer had gotten past that when he was ten. He and Ryan had been on the same summer swim team together, from age four until Ryan quit at sixteen. During that time, there had been a lot of weird kids who liked to crash the other bathroom and throw back the curtains for whatever reason. Swimming broke down everyone’s barriers, except Ryan’s, but it was okay because Spencer was there to shield her from anyone who tried to yank back her curtain. 

 

Ryan heard the door to the bedroom open and turned around to see Dallon maneuvering his way out of the room. He’d flipped his hair to one side, so that his bangs were no longer in his face, and he’d put on a soft blue shirt that brought out his eyes. Ryan was reminded of Spencer, back when they’d been in high school and he’d gone to his senior prom with Haley to try and save their failing relationship. Haley had dumped Spencer a week later, and Spencer had ended up at Ryan’s dad’s house, laid out on Ryan’s bed and ranting about how much he hated Haley even though he was still in love with her.

 

“Sorry there’s not a lot of food here,” Dallon said, moving across the room. “I’m not that great of a cook. I’m a better barista though, and I make a mean espresso.”

 

“Is that why you have Folgers coffee in this kitchen?” Ryan asked, arching an eyebrow. She was feeling better now that the coke was hitting her system. “Because last time I checked, that’s shit tier coffee.”

 

“It’s what was here when I came in yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to go out and get real food,” Dallon said. He leaned one of the crutches against the counter and then leaned around Ryan to open up the freezer. There were four different frozen dinners inside. That was more like what Ryan was used to eating. It had been weird, going from either of her parent’s houses to Spencer’s house. Spencer’s mom was a housewife until she got divorced, and she did a lot of cooking. Neither of Ryan’s parents could cook for shit, and so she grew up on a lot of microwaved meals and takeout. 

 

“That’s fine,” Ryan said. “I’m not hungry anyway.”

 

“Well, whenever you are, just let me know and we can eat,” Dallon said, and let the freezer door close. He stood in front of Ryan, looking down at her with his soft, tired eyes. Ryan wondered what he’d look like in bed, squirming under her as she rode him and held him down so that she stayed in control. He was an attractive man, and she was someone who could only feel wanted through sex. Anything else felt fake. 

 

Dallon grabbed his other crutch and made his way over to the couch, dropping down gracelessly and letting out a soft, “oof” as his back hit the cushions. He dropped his crutches to the floor and patted the seat next to him. “We’re gonna be stuck here for a bit. Wanna sit down and talk about whatever comes to mind?”

 

“Honestly?” Ryan said, crossing the room and dropping down on the other end of the couch. “I’d rather be getting shitfaced. But you don’t have any alcohol here, and our mutual friend just died as an alcoholic, so I don’t know how appropriate that would be.”

 

“He wasn’t drunk,” Dallon said, his voice catching on the last word. He curled in on himself, dropping his gaze to what was left of his leg. He looked like he was about to cry. 

 

“What do you mean, he wasn’t drunk?” Ryan said. She knew Spencer, even though they weren’t as close as they used to be. He always crawled back to her whenever he was drunk and he remembered which house she lived in. He wasn’t pretty, when he showed up on Ryan’s front steps, but she let him in and she let him shake and throw up in her bathroom and then pass out on her mattress that was soiled already with blood and vomit and semen. They were an ugly pair later in life, but they were still equals. Now, Spencer was gone and Ryan was left wondering how she managed to outlive him. 

 

“I was in the car when it crashed,” Dallon said. That was something Ryan didn’t know. There was a lot about Spencer’s death that she didn’t know, but she’d imagined him alone, slurring along to whatever song was on the radio, a bottle of pills and a half empty beer sitting between his legs. Dallon, a stranger, was sitting there and telling her that she didn’t know shit. “We were driving back from an AA meeting, the second one Spence had ever been to, and he was so excited to get back home and tell Brendon that he was getting clean. He wasn’t drunk, or high or anything. He was just… he was sober and it was the first time I’d seen him sober since we met, and I--”

 

Dallon closed his eyes and pressed the palm of his hand against his face. His shoulders were shaking. He’d seen Spencer die, then, if he was in the car when it happened. Spencer hadn’t made it to the hospital. He’d swerved, gotten hit straight on, and the impact had crushed him. Boom. Gone. One minute there was Spencer, and the next there were Spencer guts sprayed across the windshield. 

 

“I believe you,” Ryan said quietly, because she couldn’t say she was sorry. She didn’t know how. 

 

Dallon looked up at her. His cheeks were wet. He looked like an angel, the kind that were facing up to the heavens and had wax dripping down from their eyes to mimic tears. Ryan had always thought those little angel statues were annoying, because who would be so weak as to cry in public, but seeing those tears on Dallon’s face felt different. Dallon wiped his face, and the parallel was gone. “What?”

 

“If you say Spencer was sober, then he was sober,” Ryan said. If Spencer died while trying to get clean, then Ryan could live with herself. It was better than thinking he died drunk, railing headfirst into the truck. She fumbled for another cigarette, to stop her hands from shaking so much. She wouldn’t get upset in front of Dallon. She had no emotions to share with him. “He was a good guy. I don’t think he wanted to be an addict for the rest of his life.”


	2. A Deep Aching In Her Chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, while in Paris AKA the city of love: I'm gonna post some fucking angst!
> 
> But seriously, Paris is cool, and Notre Dame is better than the movie could ever depict it. I still can't speak a lick of French.

_ Ryan’s dad died on a Friday. She was in the middle of an exam when it happened, so she didn’t see the seven missed calls until an hour after the fact. All of the voicemails said the same thing: get to the hospital. Something’s happened with your dad. Ryan called Spencer first, because he was her best friend and he wasn’t in school at the moment, so surely he knew what was going on.  _

 

_ “I don’t know if I should tell you over the phone,” Spencer said, which was never a good thing. Ryan was standing outside the library, trying to light a cigarette with one hand, and thinking about how she was supposed to meet Keltie later that night.  _

 

_ “Spence, come on,” Ryan muttered around her cigarette, still unable to get the lighter to work. “It’s my fucking dad, how bad can it be?” _

 

_ “Ryan…” Spencer said. “Please just come to the hospital. Please.” _

 

_ “Fine, asshole. Are you already there?” she felt a little bad about how rude she was being, but she was stressed enough as it was. She was less than half a GPA point from losing her scholarship, and she’d had to take on a third job just to pay for her dad’s medical bills. Ryan didn’t want to drop out of college. It was her only chance of getting out of the hellhole she’d been born into, and she couldn’t risk it anymore than she already was. _

 

_ She took a bus to the hospital after finishing her cigarette. For whatever reason, the campus buses didn’t allow smoking, so Ryan had to just sit there and stare out the window. Spencer and Brendon were waiting in the front lobby when Ryan got off the bus. Ryan hated Brendon, only because he was constantly hanging off of Spencer’s arm and had put the dumb bakery idea in to Spencer’s head.  _

 

_ “Hey,” Spencer said softly. “I’ll go tell the nurses you’re here.” _

 

_ He left Ryan alone with Brendon. Brendon was watching her warily, like he was waiting for her to pounce on him and start tearing his limbs off or something. Ryan could never tell if Brendon thought of her as a threat or not. She wasn’t a threat, because she was never anyone’s first choice, and she wasn’t surprised that Spencer was ditching her the first chance he got. Now that he was finally fitting into other people’s idea of attractiveness, he didn’t need Ryan.  _

 

_ “So, uh, this is probably a bad time to tell you, but Spencer and I are dating,” Brendon said.  _

 

_ Ryan rolled her eyes. “No shit. He told me months ago. Congrats, and whatever. If you break his heart I’ll break your dick and feed it to you.” _

 

_ “Mr. Ross, we’re ready to take you back,” a nurse said. From the way she was looking at Ryan, Ryan was pretty sure she’d overheard Ryan’s threat. It didn’t matter. Ryan didn’t care about impressing some random nurse. She just wanted to know why everyone was calling her to make sure she checked in on her father.  _

 

_ “Spence, come on,” Ryan said, but Spencer didn’t follow her.  _

 

_ “I’m sorry, Mr. Ross, but we can’t let family members in to discuss such a sensitive topic,” the nurse said. Ryan made a face. Sensitive topic? Spencer already knew that Ryan’s dad was an alcoholic with a shitty liver. Spencer knew as much about Ryan’s dad as Ryan did, because she told him everything that she knew about his condition. Someone had to help her figure out what to do with the bastard now that he wasn’t around to throw his shit at her all the time.  _

 

_ “What do you mean, sensitive topic?” Ryan asked as she followed the nurse through the doors. She knew where they kept her father, so she was confused when the nurse pressed the down button on the elevator. “What happened with my dad that Spencer can’t know about?” _

 

_ The nurse turned around, and her face was clouded with sympathy. “Mr. Ross, your father passed away this morning. We’re taking you down to the morgue so you can tell us what you want to do with his body, since you’re listed as his next of kin.” _

 

_ “Oh,” was all Ryan could say, because she didn’t know how else to feel about the situation. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Her father’s death was inevitable, but she still wasn’t expecting it. _

 

“My dad was an alcoholic,” Ryan said, for whatever fucking reason. “And Spencer knew it, because I’d go to his house whenever my dad was really drunk and I was scared he’d start beating me again. So, when I found out that Spencer was drinking on top of the pills… I don’t know. I was pissed. I wanted to kick him out and tell him to go fuck himself, because he  _ knew _ what that meant to me.”

 

“Why didn’t you?” Dallon asked. 

 

“Because when it was me showing up on his doorstep at three in the morning, high as hell and clutching a bottle of vodka, Spencer never turned me away,” Ryan said. “I’m a shitty person, but I’m not that shitty. I couldn’t leave Spencer alone, even when he probably needed me to get out of his life.”

 

“Yeah, he was a charming mother fucker, that’s for sure,” Dallon said. He was smiling, the sad smile he always seemed to put on his face. Ryan wondered if he ever smiled because he was happy. She wondered if he was ever happy, or if the only thing clear and blue about him were his eyes. 

 

Outside, the storm raged on, and the rain slammed against the glass doors in Dallon’s bedroom. The rain was so thick that Ryan couldn’t see the ocean, even though she knew it was less than twenty yards away. The downpour was impressive, a constant torrent of water and wind and aggression. Spencer was being mourned in the most natural way possible. Even his ocean was upset, and throwing a tantrum over his loss. 

 

“Were you in love with him?” Ryan asked. She was watching the rain come down, more entranced by that then by Dallon. The rain made sense. Dallon was a person, and Ryan didn’t know anything about him. 

 

“Were you?” Dallon asked, and that threw Ryan off guard. No one asked her questions about how she felt, or if she cared about people. They all assumed that she did, or that she didn’t. The nurses all assumed that she’d been close with her father because she’d been paying for his medical bills, which wasn’t at all true. Ryan had only been keeping him alive because she’d wanted to make something of herself before he died, so that he’d died knowing that she didn’t need shit from him. Of course, that hadn’t happened, and he’d died while Ryan was still in college, before she found cocaine and hard liquor and stopped giving a shit about becoming anyone important. 

 

“Why do you care?” Ryan snapped. “He’s dead either way.”

 

“You asked me first, and you knew Spencer longer,” Dallon said. She hated how he wasn’t getting annoyed with her. She wanted him to snap back, to get angry, to throw something. That’s what all men did when Ryan started being honest. They never liked it. They never appreciated her. “I figured there was a reason behind you asking that specific question, especially since there’s no way you could have known I was into men and women.”

 

Ryan slumped down into her seat and took a drag from her cigarette. “Right. I… I did love him. For a long time. It’s complicated.”

 

“Imagine meeting him only to find out he’d engaged to the guy that hired you,” Dallon said, smiling sadly again. Ryan really wished he’d stop that. It just made her feel bad for him. “Because that’s how I got to know Spencer. It was hard to fall out of love with him, and even harder to show up to the wedding.”

 

“I wasn’t invited,” Ryan said. “What was it like?”

 

“Heart-warming,” Dallon said. “I spent most of the ceremony telling myself not to hate Brendon, and I wish I was a better person so I could have actually enjoyed it. Everyone got drunk at the reception. I was in the bathroom getting sick when they cut the cake, but apparently Spencer and Brendon were both really happy and crying a lot. One of Spencer’s sisters caught Brendon’s bouquet and Spencer made him throw it again.”

 

Ryan let out a laugh, despite the twisted feeling in her stomach. “That sounds exactly like Spencer. One time in high school he found out that one of the guys in my grade was hitting on one of his sisters so he found out where the guy’s car was and slashed three tires before leaving a note on the dash that said  _ she’s thirteen you creep _ . Spencer was cool with a lot of things, but he never let anyone hurt his siblings.”

 

“He was like that with his step-brother, too,” Dallon said. “Jackson was really into making pastries and designing stuff, so Spencer would let him hang out in the kitchen whenever it was slow. Jackson loved it, and he would come up during the summer to stay with Spencer and Brendon and work at the cafe. It was pretty cute, seeing the two of them working back there.”

 

“I never met Jackson,” Ryan said. She knew who Jackson was, obviously, because Spencer had mentioned his mother remarrying and the guy having a son who was a few years younger than Spencer’s twin sisters. Spencer’s mom had gotten remarried in 2008, though, and Spencer stopped telling Ryan about his life around a year after that happened. Ryan moved to Philly not long after Spencer and Brendon got a cute little house in the suburbs of Baltimore. If they were going to be domestic, then there would be no room for her there. 

 

“Do you want to meet him?” Dallon asked. “I think Spencer’s family is staying here too.”

 

“I know they are,” Ryan said. “We used to come here during the summer when Spence and I were kids.”

 

“Really? To this specific building or to Myrtle Beach in general?” Dallon asked. 

 

“This building,” Ryan said. “Spencer and I were super pissed when they shut down the Piggly Wiggly. They had these little carts that Spencer and I would use even though we were way too tall for them, but the shit that replaced it doesn’t have any of that. So, naturally, it sucks in comparison.”

 

“You two must have had one hell of a childhood,” Dallon said. 

 

“You don’t know the half of it,” Ryan said. Most of Ryan’s happy memories had happened here, in Myrtle Beach. She remembered racing Spencer around the lazy river pool late at night, when the pool was supposed to be closed and both of them were supposed to be coming up to where their parents were waiting on them. She remembered throwing a frisbee around with Spencer and his sisters, and trying to keep them from getting into the game because they were small and annoying then. 

 

There was the time when Ryan was sixteen and had just gotten her license. It was right after Spencer’s parents got a divorce, and Spencer was angry at everything. Ryan texted him through the wall and suggested they go for a drive, so they did. There wasn’t much open at midnight, but they found an ice cream place that was about to close down and bought two waffle cones. They ate them on the beach and kept having to spit out sand, but it was still a great moment. 

 

Dallon was picking at the empty leg of his pants. His eyelashes were long, and shining in the lights from above. “Spencer never treated me like I was some random cashier. It was weird, because every job up until then… I was just that weird guy who never talked about anything outside of work. Spencer didn’t care, and he made me feel at home there.”

 

“Did you ever sleep with him?” Ryan asked. 

 

“What?” Dallon said, looking offended. “No, of course not. He was engaged, and he and Brendon were clearly in love with each other. I wasn’t going to ruin that.”

 

“You’re a good person,” Ryan said. “No wonder Spencer never told me anything about you.”

 

Dallon looked at Ryan sadly, like he knew what she wasn’t saying to him. Spencer and Ryan had never fully separated, even after Spencer spat in Ryan’s face and Ryan spat back. He couldn’t end a friendship, and she couldn’t stop being in love with him. Brendon had never mattered. He was just someone secondary in Spencer’s life, at least in Ryan’s mind. 

 

_ Ryan was laid out on her mattress, staring up at the Christmas lights on her ceiling. They were blinking, or she was starting to lose it. She couldn’t remember the last time she was sober, but it didn’t matter because she’d been getting laid frequently and she hadn’t gotten fired from her most recent job yet. All of that was good. Ryan was doing fine. She could carry this bender out for as long as she needed, and no one would give a shit so long as she paid rent and showed up for most of her shifts.  _

 

_ “Ryan! There’s a cute guy with a beard downstairs!” someone called through the door, banging on it so hard Ryan thought the wood would break. “He said he wants you, so come get him, bitch!” _

 

_ “Go fuck yourself!” Ryan shouted back. She took a long, final drag from her cigarette and then tossed it out the window before standing up. The world phased in and out, rotating around her as she made her way to the door. She was only wearing a bra and jeans, so she grabbed her leather jacket off the floor and zipped it up on her way down the stairs. If it was a guy, he was here to fuck her or give her more drugs, so it didn’t matter how well dressed she was. Ryan just didn’t want people to think she was a slut from the moment they saw her. That would come later, when they realised she was only good for sex.  _

 

_ “Spencer?” Ryan blurted out when she saw him half passed out on the couch. It was the same face she remembered from two years ago, but he was barely recognisable now. He’d cut his hair short, trimmed his beard down to a messy stubble, and he’d lost weight. A significant amount of weight, and he didn’t look healthy anymore. He was thin and pale and there were deep circles under his eyes.  _

 

_ His pupils were blown wide. He was high as a fucking kite, not that Ryan was any better, but she had a tolerance now, and Spencer… Spencer didn’t.  _

 

_ Ryan’s roommates were staring at her, so she grabbed Spencer and pulled him back up the stairs to the safety of her room. She sat him down on the bed, not sure if he was still grounded enough to talk to her or not. He was scaring her, a little, because Ryan had seen Spencer drunk before, and she’d seen him stoned and high and all that, but he’d never been like this. She was looking at a ghost, almost. Like Spencer was dead and this was what was left of him.  _

 

_ “Spence? You still with me?” Ryan asked, reaching out and stroking his cheek. His skin was warm, which was good. “It’s Ryan. I know… I know I look different now, so you might not recognise me. I started HRT, Spence. I’m finally doing it.” _

 

_ “I haven’t seen Brendon in a month,” Spencer said. His voice was scratchy, and he wasn’t really looking at Ryan. Which was why, when he leaned in and kissed her, Ryan didn’t see it coming. Her heart sped up, and she kissed him back without asking if he and Brendon were done, because she didn’t care. Spencer was kissing her. Spencer had his tongue in her mouth, and he he was unzipping her jacket and pressing his hands to her stomach. His fingers were cold. Ryan gasped against his mouth.  _

 

_ Spencer leaned back, his forehead still pressed to Ryan’s. “You okay?” _

 

_ “Your hands are cold,” Ryan said. “Take off your shirt and I’ll warm them for you.” _

 

_ Spencer did, and Ryan pushed him back on the mattress and kissed him again, rubbing their bodies together and pulling at Spencer’s hair so that she could tell him what to do while they fucked. It was the closest she’d ever felt to being loved, and she knew it only happened because he was too high to care.  _

 

Ryan didn’t want to talk about Spencer, not if she was going to have to admit all the things she did with him that she shouldn’t have done. So, she got up and walked over to the freezer and grabbed a dinner. Ryan didn’t look to see what it was, because she wasn’t actually hungry and if it turned out to be bad she could just hand it to Dallon and come off as being nice. 

 

“You know you don’t have to eat those if you don’t want to,” Dallon said from where he was still sitting on the couch. 

 

Ryan flipped her hair over her shoulder and looked at him. “What other options do we have? We’re in the middle of a storm warning, remember? And I got my license taken away seven months ago, so I can’t drive you anywhere. Unless you’ve got a secret chauffer up your sleeve, I’m pretty sure we’re stuck here until the storm blows over.”

 

“I can drive.”

 

“You have one leg.”

 

“Yeah, but it’s the one I use to hit the pedals,” Dallon said. “Besides, my doctor is still up in Baltimore, and what he doesn’t know about can’t hurt him. I’m fine. I’m not going to crash or anything, and I’ve got really bad cabin fever left over from when I was in the hospital.”

 

Ryan pressed her forehead against the microwave and closed her eyes. It was vibrating gently, and when coupled with the rain, was almost comforting. Ryan couldn’t forget why she was back here, though, so she couldn’t really relax. Spencer was dead, the last of him drifting off to the bottom of the ocean, and he’d never know that Ryan cared enough to come back. She’d come back too late, but she’d made it, and that had to mean something. If there was anything left of Spencer, she hoped he knew that she still cared. She still loved him, even when he was only ashes.

 

The microwave beeped and Ryan jumped, hitting her back against the counter. Dallon laughed from his seat on the couch. Ryan turned and glare at him. “Shut the fuck up.”

 

“Sorry,” Dallon said. “So, I know you already warmed your food, but do you want to go out anyway? I’m tired of sitting around. There’s too much to think about.”

 

“Is the store even open?” Ryan said, feeling practical for once in her life. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to get out, because she did. She just didn’t want to move from one cramped place with this guy to another. She needed her space. She also wanted her things, from where they were sitting on a semi-cleaned bed in a no name motel room off the highway. 

 

Dallon dangled a set of car keys in the air. “Only one way to find out.”

 

“Alright,” Ryan said. If she was going to die, it might as well be in a car crash during a hurricane, the day of her best friend’s funeral. It would be fitting, after all. Ryan had always followed Spencer around, always a little late and always after people had stopped paying attention. She always faded into obscurity, in the end. Spencer ended up as a well-known baker with a beautiful husband and two adorable dogs. Ryan was just his washed up addict of an ex best friend. Ryan was the vice to every single one of Spencer’s virtues.

 

She followed Dallon again, still barefoot. Dallon didn’t comment on it. Ryan was thankful. Dallon’s car was parked in the handicapped space, and most of the trunk was sticking out of the space. It was large, dark red, and there were a handful of stickers slapped onto the back. Ryan lit a cigarette and walked up to the back of the car, reading them over. 

 

“Don’t look at those, they’re all shit,” Dallon said. He sounded bitter about it, so Ryan stopped looking and walked around to the passenger door of the car. She smoked on her cigarette with her feet on the dash while Dallon moved around on the other side of the car, trying to get himself and his crutches into the vehicle. Ryan didn’t know how to help him, or if he wanted her help. Aside from when they’d first met, Dallon seemed pretty determined to do shit on his own. 

 

“So you just worked for Spencer, then?” Ryan asked Dallon once he was in the car and starting it up. She didn’t know why she kept asking him questions. She didn’t particularly care what his answers were. 

 

“Yeah, but we were friends outside of work,” Dallon said. “He and Brendon both were really friendly. I know everyone says not to trust your boss with your secrets, but I was one of the first people Spencer told about his addiction issues, back before he decided to start getting help for it. I don’t know if that means anything, or if he just didn’t want to bring it up with Brendon because Brendon also drank.”

 

“I never liked Brendon,” Ryan said, because she finally could. Everyone else thought he was perfect and charming, but Ryan never saw it. He was just a kid who’d grown up with no friends and was trying too hard to make something of himself as an adult. “He was just as charming to customers as he was to Spencer and I. That’s how I knew he had to be faking.”

 

Dallon looked over at her, with his mouth set in a deep frown. So. He was one of those people who liked Brendon. Of course. Everyone liked Brendon. No one liked Ryan. 

 

“That’s just who Brendon is,” Dallon said. He was holding the wheel so tightly that his knuckles had gone white, and the road in front of them was barely visible through the downpour. “He’s a perky guy. I thought he was faking it too, for a while, but I promise you, he’s not. He genuinely has a positive outlook on life, even after all the shit his family gave him growing up.”

 

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Ryan said. She’d seen some of it, back when she still trailed around Spencer and thought she had a real chance with him. She remembered when Brendon’s parents officially kicked him out, and he moved in with Ryan and Spencer until the boys got enough money to start up their bakery. Brendon had never been too shaken up about the whole thing. 

 

_ The apartment in Baltimore was tiny, with only one bedroom and one bathroom. The kitchen barely had space for a stove, but that didn’t stop Spencer from buying out a good portion of the tiny corner mart across the street. Ryan was sure that three people were not meant to live in such a small space, but she couldn’t argue about it. This was the only way she could get out of Virginia and never have to go back.  _

 

_ College was out of the picture. Ryan didn’t have money, and she wasn’t about to go ask her mother and her shit husband. She’d finally married Jared, and they were having a baby even though Ryan was twenty and Jared was still only interested in little kids.  _

 

_ “You shouldn’t be smoking inside, dude, it’ll make everything stink,” Brendon said. They had no furniture other than a mattress and a small TV, so Brendon and Ryan were on the floor. Spencer was stocking the bakery downstairs.  _

 

_ Ryan flicked a piece of ash off into the ashtray she’d bought at a rest stop. “Cigarettes don’t even smell bad. You’re just used to everything smelling like old people and mothballs.” _

 

_ Brendon rolled his eyes. “That’s not what my parents’ house smelled like.” _

 

_ “Do you think they’ll ever let you back in, or are you going to be with Spencer and I for the rest of our lives?” Ryan asked. She took a drag of her cigarette, thinking about the makeup and the dresses she’d have to hide from him. Brendon still made transvestite jokes. Spencer still let him. Ryan wasn’t planning on telling Brendon the truth, even if he held her at gunpoint and demanded it from her. She blew smoke up into the air. “Because some people do come around and accept their kids, you know. So you don’t have to stick around here forever.” _

 

_ “I’m not going anywhere,” Brendon said. “Why would I, when Spencer’s here?” _

 

_ “Why’s Spencer your deal breaker?” Ryan snapped. It didn’t matter that she was certain the two were dating. Spencer had been her friend first, and when they were younger and Spencer felt like his whole world was falling apart, they’d promised each other that they’d never part ways. They were a duo, a team, and there was no place for Brendon in all of that.  _

 

_ Brendon smiled. “Because I love him. We’re gonna get married, one day. Whenever it’s legal or we can move to New York. He promised.” _

 

_ “You’re nineteen,” Ryan said. “And you shouldn’t just blindly trust someone. It never turns out well in the end.” _

 

“Did you and Spencer ever date?” Dallon asked, bringing Ryan out of her musings before she could burn her fingers on her cigarette. “Is that why you’re so pissed off at Brendon, just for existing?”

 

“No,” Ryan said. “Spencer didn’t know.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Dallon didn’t need to say anything more. There was something especially tragic about loving someone who never knew, and Ryan knew that Dallon understood. He too had loved Spencer when he shouldn't have, and he'd been with Spencer at the end of his life. Ryan wished it had been her, but she also wished that Spencer, not Dallon, had been the one to survive the crash. Ryan didn't know Dallon, so she didn't particularly care if he lived or if he died. He was just a random person in her walk of life. Spencer was special, though. He was the first person she had loved, the  _ only _ person she had loved, and now he was gone before Ryan had the chance to fix things between them. 

 

“I thought about telling him, once,” Dallon said when the silence and the pounding of the rain were starting to get to be too much. “I backed out at the last minute. He wouldn't… he and Brendon weren't perfect, but they loved each other, in a way I'd never seen before, and Spencer wouldn't throw that away for someone like me. So I made something up and never talked about my feelings for him ever again.”

 

“What do you mean,  _ someone like you _ ?” Ryan asked. “You had both of your legs then, so what the fuck would turn Spencer off of you?”

 

Dallon rolled his eyes. “Are you ever not a complete asshole, or is that just the cocaine you snorted off the bathroom sink?”

 

Ryan frowned. She'd cleaned that up. 

 

“I used to work at a gay bar in Philly, before Spencer and Brendon hired me,” Dallon said. “It was trashy enough that they were willing to hire an eighteen year old runaway, and there were a lot of drugs. Not only do I know what cocaine residue looks like, I know when a person’s high. You're high. I don't care, but at least have the decency to snort your shit on the coffee table like a classy person instead of the bathroom.”

 

“Who the fuck even are you?” Ryan asked. It was a rhetorical question, mostly, but Dallon was starting to pique her interest. So he was a runaway, he'd worked in a gay bar, and he'd also been secretly in love with her dead best friend. 

 

Dallon gritted his teeth and pulled into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. There were a handful of other cars there, but the parking lot was mostly empty. It made sense, considering how much rain was coming down. Ryan rolled down the window and tossed her cigarette butt out, shaking her hand dry before rolling the window back up. 

 

“Shit,” Dallon said when they were sitting in a handicapped parking space. “I don't have an umbrella.”

 

“Could you even hold one if you did?” Ryan asked. 

 

Dallon arched his eyebrows and looked down his nose at her. It was rather condescending, considering he was the dumbass who'd forgotten an umbrella in the middle of a rain storm. “I didn't just bring you along for your looks and snappy commentary, you know. You've got two arms, you can use them.”

 

“Ah, right,” Ryan said. She'd forgotten what it was like to deal with other people who didn't put up with her shit. Even Spencer had let Ryan be as pissy as she wanted, because Spencer knew what had made her bitter and distrusting. She nodded and slung her purse over one shoulder. “Do you… do you want me to help you out or anything?”

 

“Nah, I'm good,” Dallon said, smiling a little at her. “I can get in and out of cars without any issues. I'll be right behind you; you can just go in and grab a cart.”

 

Ryan nodded, and opened the door. Immediately, she was soaked, and the wind was sending sheets of water into the car. Ryan slammed the door closed and half walked, half ran up to the store and under the cover. She turned around to make sure that Dallon was doing okay, and saw him struggling with his crutches. Ryan frowned. He'd said that he didn't need any help, but he was starting to look like a drowned rat, and there was water getting into his car… Ryan shook her head and ran back out into the rain, towards Dallon. 

 

Dallon pulled out his second crutch and snapped it into place, wrapping his fingers around the handle. He shut the car door with his hip and looked down at Ryan through his bangs, which were soaked against his forehead. “I told you, I got this. I'm just not as fast as most people.”

 

He locked the car with his other hand and hobble towards the door. Ryan followed. She was going to have to change clothes again, unless she and Dallon could get out to her hotel room and grab her something that was dry and also hers. 

 

The grocery store was empty aside from two employees hovering at the checkout and an old man in a straw hat. He was wet, but not soaked like Dallon or Ryan, so presumably he'd been in the store for a while. Ryan gritted her teeth. What if that jackass was the reason the employees were still here? They couldn't just kick him out, Ryan knew that. She'd worked at enough convenience stores to know that wouldn't go over well. 

 

Ryan tapped Dallon's shoulder. “Let's be quick about this, okay?”

 

“Why?” Dallon said. “It's not like the storm can get worse.”

 

Ryan rolled her eyes. “Do you really think those two want to be here in the middle of this? They have lives when they're not on the clock, and we're  _ trapping _ them here when they could be safe and at home. Us, and that old fucker who keeps circling the cereal aisle.”

 

“We'll be quick,” Dallon said. He motioned towards the carts with his shoulder. “You're in charge of that, though. I'm not that good.”

 

Ryan grabbed a cart, and followed Dallon through the store. She was still barefoot, but they were at the beach so no one was looking at her strangely. This wasn't the first time she'd gone shopping for foot without shoes, but it was the first time she'd gone shopping with someone who was completely sober. 

 

Dallon paused by the wine wall. He glanced over his shoulder. “Anything you want in particular?”

 

“Wow, you're buying an alcoholic wine after you just lost your best friend, who was also an alcoholic,” Ryan said for some reason. Of  _ course _ she wanted a bottle of fucking wine. She wasn't an idiot. If she was going to make it through the storm and the rest of the funeral bullshit, she was going to need something to get drunk off of. She couldn't deal with a bunch of sad, emotional people otherwise. Besides, it would give them all a person to blame. Ryan Ross, the wicked serpent who tempted their beautiful, pure Spencer into sin and drugs. 

 

Dallo slumped down on his crutches and rolled his eyes. “I'm trying to be nice. And it's not just for you, I'm gonna be drinking this shit too.”

 

“I usually grab whatever's cheapest, honestly,” Ryan said. Dallon nodded, and then grabbed a giant bottle of Barefoot red. He put it into the cart, stared at it for a moment, and then grabbed a second one. “Eh, why the hell not. I've given up on pain meds, this isn't the worst thing I've been through.”

 

“What was?” Ryan asked. Dallon didn't answer, even though he looked right at her when she asked. Instead, he turned around and headed towards the frozen food aisle. Ryan rolled her eyes and followed him, letting him toss in a few meals and a tub of cookies and cream ice cream. He also got a baguette, chicken, hot sauce, and some spices that Ryan didn't pay attention to when he threw them into the cart. 

 

“You're cool with meat and spicy shit, right?” Dallon asked. Ryan nodded. Dallon grinned. “Sweet. We're good to check out then, unless there's anything you wanted?”

 

“Coffee?” Ryan asked. “I'm not much of a tea drinker.”

 

“Sure. Go grab whatever brand you like, and I'll check us out,” Dallon said. He poked the cart forward with his crutch, and Ryan wanted to go back and help him, but she didn't. Dallon could handle this. He was the one with the missing leg, and he seemed to have a good grasp on what he could and couldn't handle. 

 

Ryan headed back to the breakfast aisle. There were a lot of different coffee brands, and she was a little overwhelmed. Whenever she did buy coffee, it was usually whatever was darkest and cheapest. Ryan didn't buy coffee for fun, she bought it to function. She ended up grabbing a bag of Starbucks grounds, and then rushed to the milk aisle to grab cream. Just because she drank her coffee black didn't mean that Dallon did. He worked at a cafe. He probably had a refined taste. 

 

_ What the fuck do coffee snobs even like for cream?  _ Ryan thought, glaring at the variety of creams. She grabbed a thing of hazelnut, because it sounded pretentious, and then ran barefoot back to the front of the store. 

 

Dallon was chatting with the cashier, smiling warmly and looking rather charming. Ryan rolled her eyes. “Dal, I got creamer too. Didn't know if you liked that.”

 

“I do, thanks,” Dallon said, turning his charm on her. Ryan wasn't affected. She wasn't some random cashier and she didn't catch feelings for any man with soft blue eyes and a smile warmer than the sun in May. She didn't. Dallon had no effect on her, even as his fingers brushed hers while he took the coffee and cream to hand them over to the cashier. He turned the cream around in his hand. “Hazelnut, nice. Brendon has this amazing hazelnut brew, it's my favourite.”

 

“If I'm ever in the area, I'll try it,” Ryan said drily. She had no intention of ever being in Baltimore ever again. She was going to die in a ditch on the side of the road in Philly, and she was going to do it elegantly, with cocaine clogging her nostrils and a half empty bottle of liquor in her hand. 

 

Dallon raised an eyebrow, like he somehow knew that she was lying. Ryan avoided meeting his eyes and grabbed the bags, pushing the cart back over to where it had come from. The sooner they got back to Dallon's condo, the sooner those two employees could go home and the sooner Ryan could get drunk and stop repressing all her emotions. It was hard, acting like she wasn't torn up by Spencer's sudden death, but she was managing. She wasn't going to break down in front of a stranger either, because she didn't want Dallon to think she was some kind of hysterical ex girlfriend or some shit. Ryan wasn't hysterical, or pitiful, or any of that shit. She was a wreck, but she was a controlled wreck, and she took a lot of pride in that. 

 

“Did you want to go by your hotel room?” Dallon asked when the two of them were back in the car and Dallon was settling his crutches in between the front seats. “I think the rain’s letting up a bit, so the roads might be open, if you wanted to try it?”

 

Ryan looked out into the parking lot. She couldn’t see the main road from where they were sitting, and everything was still drenched and grey. The storm was still out there, and unlike Dallon, Ryan knew it wasn’t going away anytime soon. She nodded, though, just to indulge him. For some reason, she was feeling nice. 

 

“What was Spencer like, when he was a kid?” Dallon asked. They were on the highway, the only car out there, and it felt like they were breaking the law and running away. Ryan thought about that Eagles song, and wondered which one of them was the girl holding the candle, luring the singer in to his demise. It would make sense that Ryan held the candle; after all, she’d lured Spencer in with drugs and sex and meaningless phrases whispered into drunken ears. She was a siren, pulling men out to sea before slamming them against rocks. 

 

But Dallon was the one keeping Ryan tied down, currently. She had no reason to stick around. She’d seen her ex best friend’s ashes thrown into the ocean. She’d seen Spencer’s mother cry and grasp at the remains of her son. She’d seen Brendon--beautiful, perfect, charming Brendon--break down and ugly cry in front of his inherited family. She’d gotten what she’d come for in the first place, and there was no reason to stay with Dallon, especially if he could get her back to her hotel room. 

 

“He was a dreamer,” Ryan said, running her fingers across the dashboard. “He dreamt up versions of the people he loved, because he didn’t see them as flawed. He was an idealist, and he saw a future where being a man with a husband was normal, and where his kids got to become whatever they wanted. He never had kids, though. He wanted them; he had a good father so he thought he could pull it off himself.”

 

Ryan skipped over the part where Spencer’s dad cheated on his mom. Jeff Smith was a good father, in comparison to most fathers, but he wasn’t a great man. He was average, but there was a low bar and he jumped over it with ease. She frowned. “He was easy to fall in love with, but no one ever did. Except Brendon.”

 

“And you,” Dallon added, like Ryan could ever forget. 

 

Ryan shook her head. “I didn’t love him right. I was too selfish and scared to get hurt. I was still jealous, though, every time he talked about someone from school, or when he never shut up about Brendon. They were in love, and they were good for each other, in the beginning, but I hated them anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment/kudos with your thoughts, and feel free to say hi to me on tumblr @wsyict!


	3. Forgotten Stains on Motel Walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both of the ryllon fics I'm writing are angsty, and I don't know if that's because of the ship or because I'm just an angsty fucker. Either way, Ryan is still suffering and Dallon is also suffering, just quietly because he internalised all of that shit. 
> 
> Yay!

“I lied earlier, when I said I’d never slept with him,” Dallon said, suddenly. He looked over at Ryan, eyes wide and afraid, like he’d confessed to some horrible sin in front of his priest. Ryan didn’t care. Dallon’s Spencer had never been Ryan’s Spencer. Dallon’s Spencer was the husband, the dog father, the man who smiled non-stop Monday through Friday and then lost himself in Philly during the weekend because he didn’t know where he was going with his life and he couldn’t understand that he’d made all the right choices already.

 

“So did I,” Ryan said. “And neither of us should have done it, but I don’t have excuses. I loved him, he was too high to realise it was a bad idea, and I didn’t love him enough to make him go home.”

 

“I also slept with Brendon,” Dallon added. Ryan wasn’t sure if he was bragging or not. Banging one boss was normal, to be expected if one wanted to get higher in the capitalist fighting ring. Banging both bosses? That was a little over the top. Even Ryan never went to those lengths to get what she wanted. 

 

“How was that?” She asked. “And did you bang them at the same time, or on different business trips?”

 

Dallon rolled his eyes. Ryan wasn’t sure what he was expecting out of her. She didn’t exist to be sympathetic, or to act as someone’s therapist as they looked back on their life and realised what a horrible person they were. She wasn’t a shoulder to cry on. Dallon wasn’t dense enough to think she was, either. He tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel. “It was… it wasn’t what I had wanted, in the end. But yes, I did sleep with them together, once or twice. But mostly it was when they couldn’t have each other, and I was a conveniently placed warm body who knew better than to talk about it.”

 

“Maybe Brendon’ll fall in love with you, now that his husband’s dead and you’re the convenient warm body,” Ryan said. She knew she’d crossed the line the moment the words were out of her mouth, but it was too late, and she’d never made the right choice before, so why would today be different? Ryan was just one mistake after another. She wouldn’t be surprised to find out, all these years later, that she was the result of a failed condom. It would make sense, all things considered.

 

It made sense when Dallon hit the brakes and veered the car off onto the side of the road, leaving the engine on so that the rain and the radio would cover the tension in the air. He threw the car into park and then turned on Ryan. She flinched back away from him, her back hitting the window, before he even raised a hand. Dallon froze, forgetting he was pissed for a moment. He dropped his head into his hands and pulled at his hair. “You can’t… you can’t fucking  _ say _ shit like that! They were--are--my friends, okay? I cared about them, naked or not naked, or whatever fucked up definition of love you have. So don’t--don’t.”

 

“It’s all I know,” Ryan snapped, and that was the most honest she’d been with anyone since… since. That was the most honest she’d been with anyone. It was all she knew. She only knew how to love someone through fucking, and she only knew bitterness and sharp, pointed remarks that struck through bone on the first hit, because they had to. Because if Ryan missed, if Ryan didn’t take out her opponent in one hit, Ryan was fucked. She pressed her back against the window, harder, to remind herself that she was real and that Dallon wasn’t about to hit her. “It’s all I know.”

 

“God, we’re fucked up,” Dallon said, more to his hands than to Ryan. He let go of his hair and looked up at Ryan. “I’m sorry I freaked you out, earlier.”

 

Ryan frowned. “What?”

 

“When you flinched,” Dallon said. He ran a hand through his rain-soaked hair, slicking it away from his face. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, and I’m not going to make you talk about it, but… I startled you, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let my emotions take over like that.”

 

“Don’t apologise, you just lost the man you were in love with, and you don’t get anything out of it,” Ryan said. She didn’t know what Spencer had left behind for Brendon, or for anyone else who was still in his life, but Dallon had just been an employee and a friend. And an occasional sex partner, but that didn’t mean much, not for Spencer. 

 

Dallon sighed, and turned back to the road. “You’ve got a suitcase waiting. I don’t want to stay out here for too long, in case we get stuck.”

 

He was changing the subject, but Ryan let it go. She didn’t want to talk about emotional shit, either. Dallon was still mostly a stranger, and Ryan was fine with keeping things that way. She hadn’t come to Spencer’s funeral with the intention of making friends, or bonding with someone over the loss. She’d come to make sure it was real, and to see how everyone else reacted. She’d also come for herself, to remind herself that none of the people she’d grown up with cared about her anymore. None of them would recognise her, even if she’d bothered to walk up and introduce herself. Ryan was just as dead to the funeral party as Spencer. 

 

_ The first time her father hit her, Ryan was ten years old. She’d come home late from Spencer’s house, knowing her father was going to be drunk, and he’d started yelling at her the moment she closed the door behind herself. Ryan, for some reason, yelled back.  _

 

_ It was a clean hit, across Ryan’s face. It stung like a bitch, and the sound that came with it was enough to shut Ryan up for a moment. She tried to hit back, because she was young and stupid and thought that somehow she’d be able to fight back against a man twice her size. It didn’t work, and he hit her, again and again, landing sloppy hits and punches until Ryan was screaming through her tears on the floor.  _

 

_ He broke down crying, hunched over beside her. Ryan stilled. She didn’t know what to do. This was her dad, even though he’d just hit her so hard her whole body hurt. This was her dad, and dad’s didn’t cry. Ryan was shaking, holding her arms around her legs and slowly moving away from him. She didn’t know what he was going to do next, and she was terrified of him. He was an unknown, now.  _

 

_ “I’m so sorry, Ryan, I’m so sorry,” he choked out. His words were wobbly with sobs and with alcohol, and Ryan wanted to believe him. “God, damn it, Ryan, I love you, you know, I’m worried about you, you’re just a kid--” _

 

_ “I’m sorry, dad,” Ryan said, tears reforming at the corners of her eyes. She reached out toward him, but his body shuddered and she fell back, worried he would change his mind and hit her again. “I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll call you, or have Spencer’s mom call you, I’m sorry.” _

 

_ There was more crying, between both of them. Ryan kept looking over her shoulder, at the front window that faced out towards the street. The walls were thin here, and the neighbours were nosy. They liked gossiping, and Ryan didn’t want people saying shit about her dad. She was too young to understand what was really happening. She soaked up his lies like he soaked up alcohol, and believed that he was just mourning his marriage. That the drinking problem only existed because Ryan’s mom left them.  _

 

_ It was a warm night, and there was no air conditioning, but Ryan was shivering anyway. She’d eaten at Spencer’s house, just in case, but now she regretted it. Her stomach was unsettled, and she could taste bile at the back of her throat. It was just nerves, though. It was just nerves.  _

 

Dallon parked in near the entrance to the hotel. He left the headlights on, so that they shone through the rain, splashing up on the side of the hotel like a pair of spotlights. His jaw was tight, and his fingers were curled around the steering wheel. Ryan raked her eyes up and down his body, looking for any sign that he might explode. Men were explosive. Spencer, for once, was not an exception. He got angry. He yelled. Sometimes he shoved Ryan, but only when they were both drunk and high and Ryan was insulting Brendon. 

 

“If you’ve got something to say, just spit it out,” Ryan said. It didn’t matter if Dallon hit her for that. She deserved it. She was a bitch, after all. 

 

“I burn myself, sometimes,” Dallon said. He was still watching the wall. It was an ugly green colour, like the colour of vomit after a night of drinking and cocaine and other things with names Ryan didn’t know and didn’t ask about. Ryan could see the downpour, and how everything was slick with rain. Dallon shifted his grip on the steering wheel. “I did it yesterday, even though I’d been clean for over a year. It’s… loosing Spencer fucking sucks, and I don’t know how to deal with anything.”

 

“And you think I do?” Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m the least functional adult on the Atlantic.”

 

“I know,” Dallon said, and a little smile curled up on his lips. He was laughing at her. Or he related to her suffering, and was comforted by it. He pushed his hair away from his face. “And I didn’t want you to think I was a saint or anything. I’m fucked up too, okay? I’m just… I learned how to hide i when I was really young. So I don’t look like a mess on the outside, unless it’s really bad.”

 

“You’re missing a leg, drenched, and driving a drug addict around,” Ryan said, rolling her eyes. “No shit, you look like a fucking mess.”

 

“We’re messes together,” Dallon said. Like this was something to bond over. Like they were both left-handed, and oh, wasn’t that so cute? Ryan and Dallon, the fuck buddies Spencer left behind. Ryan rolled her eyes and didn’t say anything to Dallon. She grabbed her purse from the floor of his car and got out, stomping through the rain to get to the hotel door. Ryan didn’t look back to see if Dallon was following her. She hoped he was, because she didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t let herself look back. She didn’t want his pity. 

 

“How can I help you, miss?” the man behind the counter asked. He was more put together than Ryan, which pissed her off. How come this fucker could sit inside during a storm, warm and comfortable behind a fucking desk? Fuck him. Fuck this entire hotel staff. 

 

Ryan dropped her purse on the desk. “I’m in room six. I’m checking out and not staying for the night.”

 

“Do you have all of your things out of your room?” he asked. 

 

_ Fuck _ . Ryan shook her head. “No. I’ll… I’ll be right back.”

 

She nearly ran out of the office and down the hall to her room, but she stopped and composed herself. Dallon was still sitting in the front seat of the car. He’d turned the headlights off, but he was still keeping an eye on her. He frowned, but Ryan shook her head. She didn’t need his help. It was one suitcase. She could handle that.

 

_ Of course the only single person dorm room was in the oldest building, in the far north corner of campus. And of course, it didn’t have any elevators. Spencer was helping Ryan move in, because he had a car now and he didn’t want her taking all of her things up four flights of stairs on her own.  _

 

_ “I really don’t have that much stuff,” Ryan said, once they had everything in her room. She was sitting on her desk and Spencer was cross-legged on the edge of her bed. Ryan crossed her legs. “I’d have been fine on my own.” _

 

_ Spencer rolled his eyes. “Come on, like you don’t want me here.” _

 

_ “How am I supposed to be a cool college girl if I have a literal baby trailing around behind me?” Ryan asked. She pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lit one up. She and Spencer had disabled the smoke detector before bringing in anything. She blew smoke out into Spencer’s face. “We’re in different worlds, now, Spence. I can’t be seen with a baby face like you.” _

 

_ “What is this, middle school?” Spencer said, laughing. Ryan wondered what it would be like, to lean over and just kiss him. If he would hit her, if he would fuck her, or if he would leave. She wondered how long it would take for him to stop seeing her as a girl, once he saw her naked. Spencer leaned forward first, though, but he didn’t capture Ryan’s lips. He captured her cigarette, putting it to his own lips and sucking in so that his cheeks were hollow. He coughed, waving his hand in front of his face, and handed the cigarette back. “Jesus. I forgot how disgusting those are. But seriously, Ry. You’re my best friend. My best girl. We’re forever.” _

 

_ Ryan raised an eyebrow, ignoring the cruel twisting in her stomach at the thought of having a forever with Spencer. “You just want to get into the good parties.” _

 

_ “That too,” Spencer said, and his smile was warmer and more brilliant than the summer sun.  _

 

Ryan opened the bottle of vodka in her suitcase and took a long drink from it. She was crying, silently, but her face was wet already and her makeup was a mess, so no one would notice. She sat down in the middle of the hotel room, open bottle in one hand and a forgotten cigarette in the other. Ryan stared down at the cigarette, watching the cherry flicker in between a dark grey and a blood orange. She turned it around in her hand, tilting her head back to expose her neck. 

 

Her dad had burned her, once. It had been with her own cigarette, when he found the pack and the cheap plastic lighter she kept under her mattress. It stung. Ryan wondered what Dallon got out of the situation, if it was his version of cocaine and alcohol and being someone’s second choice. 

 

A hand snatched the cigarette away, and Ryan was pulled back against someone’s warm chest. “Whoa, what are you doing?”

 

“Fuck if I know,” Ryan said, curling in against Dallon. His crutches were splayed out behind him, and he was sitting on his one remaining leg, holding tightly onto Ryan’s shoulder. She let go of the vodka and wrapped her arms around him, letting him hold her. She hadn’t been held like this, or at all, in years. It was a strange sensation. 

 

“You don’t have to do that, okay?” Dallon whispered. He was talking into her hair. Ryan’s hair probably smelled horrible, like shoving a cigar up someone’s nose and expecting them to snort. Dallon rubbed her back, gently, tracing circles into the flannel she was wearing. “You don’t have to hurt yourself.”

 

“You don’t either, dumbass,” Ryan said, because she was uncomfortable with someone genuinely caring about her.

 

Dallon laughed into her hair. Ryan was starting to realise that Dallon laughed when he didn’t want to cry. So, Ryan hugged him tighter, and didn’t think about any of the ways she knew how to deal with someone’s emotions. She didn’t want to fuck Dallon, not like this. He was worth more than sex, but Ryan didn’t know how to tell him that without things getting weird. Ryan didn’t know how to say a lot of things. 

 

She shivered, and Dallon pulled her closer. Ryan closed her eyes for a moment and removed all thoughts of Spencer and old mattresses from her head. “Fuck this weather. It’s supposed to be warm by now.”

 

“I thought you said you lived in Philly,” Dallon said. “Isn’t it cold in Philly?”

 

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “But this isn’t Philadelphia. This is Myrtle Beach.”

 

“You’ve got a point,” Dallon said. He slowly let go or Ryan and sat back, holding himself up by his arms. Ryan turned around so that she could see him, drenched in the rain and looking fresh. His eyes scanned her face, searching for something, some kind of answer to a question neither of them had asked. Ryan knew he’d never find it. She didn’t have answers. The only things she knew were the wrong things, and she was of no help to Dallon. His eyes paused on her mouth, and he smiled, showing off his dimples. “Let’s get back to my condo, alright? It’s warmer there. And I’ve got cable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed, and feel free to say hi to me on tumblr @fluffydallon!


	4. Like a Light Bulb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello I am back. And there's a lot that happens in this chapter (and the next). So, fair warning to those who are sensitive: I hit almost everything in this fic, and especially in the next few chapters. This is the beginning of the turning point, for Ryan and Dallon both, and they're going to unearth a lot of stuff about themselves that's really fucking painful. 
> 
> So, yeah, warnings and all that shit. And remember that this was originally titled "Ryllon Angst Fic" for a reason

_ Ryan was sitting on an overpass, watching the cars down below and flicking her cigarette butts down at them. Brendon would yell at her for it, if he knew. Ryan would let him, because she knew she was a piece of shit and she knew Brendon loved being right more than anything. His high horse was on a high fucking horse.  _

 

_ Ryan was also more than a little drunk. It was two in the afternoon, not that that mattered. Ryan didn’t have a job anymore. She’d been fired, just last week, for no good reason. She wasn’t drunk, or high, or swearing at any of the customers. No, it was because she was a fucking trans woman, and her boss wasn’t comfortable with Ryan’s existence. So, Ryan was out of a job, and probably in trouble for slicing three of her boss’s tires.  _

 

_ Ryan didn’t make good decisions.  _

 

_ “You look lonely,” a voice said. Ryan looked up to see Spencer slowly joining her. “How’s life?” _

 

_ “How did you find me?”  _

 

_ “You have a  _ lot _ of friends in this city, Ry,” Spencer said. He was grinning. He looked way too happy to be on the side of a bridge in Philadelphia. “I’m high as fuck, by the way. One of your friends gave me something and it is not at all what I was expecting. Don’t let me fall off the fucking bridge. That would suck ass.” _

 

_ “Whatever happened to not taking candy from strangers?” Ryan said, rolling her eyes.  _

 

_ “E isn’t candy,” Spencer said. “I’m engaged, by the way.” _

 

_ “Jesus christ,” Ryan said, because she had nothing else to say. “Why?” _

 

_ Spencer shrugged. “It’s legal now, I fucking love Bren, and we were gonna go up to Boston and do it anyway. Now we don’t have to.” _

 

_ Ryan nodded, and tossed her cigarette over the side of the bridge. “Is this you inviting me?” _

 

_ “Yeah,” Spencer said. He leaned over and kissed Ryan before she could light a new cigarette. Ryan kissed back, because she loved him the way he loved his fiance. Spencer cupped her face in his hands. “I want you there. You’re my best friend, and I couldn’t get married without you.” _

 

_ “Best friends don’t do this,” Ryan said, in between kissing him. She couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t care enough about Brendon to even consider it. “We’re not friends, Spence. You can’t have everything.” _

 

_ “I don’t want everything,” he said. Ryan believed him. She wasn’t sure why. _

 

“Other than your leg, if you could have anything in the world, what would it be?” Ryan asked. She and Dallon were both successfully buzzed, and were cuddled up together on his bed, watching reruns of VHS’s top 100 one-hit wonders of the 80s. She put a cigarette in her mouth but made no move to light it. Her lighter was too far away, and Dallon was a warm presence beside her. It felt like something intimate, but it wasn’t. Ryan was afraid of ruining the image.

 

“A family,” Dallon said. “Or, fuck… I’ve always wanted to see the Rockies. I wanted to be a ski bum when I was a kid.”

 

“You’d need your leg for that,” Ryan said. 

 

“Probably,” Dallon said. He turned over onto his side and nuzzled against her neck. Ryan just leaned her head back and let him. Dallon let out a sigh. “What about you? What’s your big dream?”

 

“I want to belong somewhere,” she said. All of her life, she’d been out of place. It’d been easier when she and Spencer were kids, because Spencer was a weirdo too, but he wasn’t the same kind of weirdo that Ryan was. He didn’t have to hide the bruises on his arms, or lie through his teeth when his mom asked why he never visited her. “I want to be free from my baggage, and all the shit I’ve lived through.”

 

“Me too,” Dallon said. 

 

“We should run away,” Ryan said, lifting her cigarette from her mouth. 

 

Dallon laughed. “And go where? Running away isn’t easy, you know.”

 

“What, are you an expert?” Ryan asked, half joking. She’d thought about running away a lot, as a kid. She thought about leaving, usually with Spencer, and the two of them starting a new life somewhere cooler than outside of Richmond, Virginia. It never happened, because Ryan never had money and Spencer always had a reason to stay where he was. Spencer didn’t have anything to run from. His parents both loved him, even when they didn’t love each other, and once he grew into his body, everyone else loved him too. 

 

“I ran away from home when I was seventeen, so yeah,” Dallon said. He turned on his side so that his back was to Ryan and he was curled around one of the pillows. “You could say that.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Ryan whispered, before she could stop herself. She tried to stay away from other people’s trauma, because she still couldn’t handle her own. She wasn’t an alcoholic and an addict at thirty just for funsies. There was a lot of shit in her life she had to bury deep down, and she didn’t want to take on anyone else’s. She cared, of course, because she knew how much trauma and abuse sucked ass, but she didn’t want to play therapist, or even a shoulder to cry on. That wasn’t her. That wasn’t her purpose in life. 

 

“It’s whatever,” Dallon said. His voice was muffled, now that he was facing away from her. “My parents didn’t support my choices, I left, I ended up being a damn good barista. It’s not the worst future I could have made for myself.”

 

Ryan leaned up on her elbow, still holding her unlit cigarette between her lips. She could see Dallon’s face now, and how it was drawn into a frown. Ryan tossed the cigarette over her shoulder, not caring where it went. She could deal with that later. She moved in behind Dallon, slowly, because she had no idea what had fucked him up and she didn’t want to make it worse. She pressed her nose to the back of his neck, rubbing her thumb over the bare skin on his arm. “I know that everyone says this, and half the time they don’t mean it, but if you want to talk about it, or yell, or smash shit until you forget… I’m not going anywhere. I’m kind of stuck here, now.”

 

“I think I need to be a lot less sober to talk about this,” Dallon said. He didn’t move away from Ryan, though. Instead, he reached up and intertwined his fingers with hers, and brought their hands to his face. He wasn’t kissing her hand, but his lips were brushing against her knuckles and Ryan could feel Dallon breathing against her skin. 

 

She closed her eyes. “We’ve still got half a bottle. Want me to grab it?”

 

“That’d be awesome,” Dallon said. She could feel him smiling against her skin, and she had to bite down on her lip to keep herself from crying. It was too soft, too genuine. Ryan as way out of her depth, and she just wanted to keep swimming. She moved herself away from him, shivering at the loss of warmth. Ryan got out of the bed and grabbed the bottle from where they’d set it on the floor earlier, and took a drink from it before turning back to Dallon. 

 

He was wrapped up in the sheets, his hair standing up and looking ruffled, and he was watching Ryan as she came back to him. Dallon sat up, slowly, and pushed himself backwards until his back was against the wall. Ryan climbed back in under the comforter and sat beside him. While he drank, she looked down at their legs. There were three long bumps in the comforter, and one short one. Dallon’s leg was slightly longer than hers, but his thighs were thicker, and his legs didn’t look like long, thin sticks hidden under the mattress. 

 

“So, i used to be Amish,” Dallon said when he set the mostly empty bottle down on the side table. “I’m also transgender, not that anyone knew that before I fucking left. And my Godfather was a fucking rapist, so that sucks.”

 

Ryan frowned. “What are you getting at?”

 

“My Godfather raped me a bunch when I was a teenager and I ended up pregnant with his kid,” Dallon said. He was slurring his words a little, like the consonants were too hard to get out, but he was upright and his jaw was still tight. “My parents thought I was some kind of succubus or what the fuck ever, and were gonna force me to marry the fucker. I was seventeen, I was fucking terrified. So naturally, I ran off to the city on weekend, got a sketchy-ass abortion that definitely wasn’t legal, and went back. I told my parents that it was a miscarriage, and that I wasn’t marrying that creep, but they said I couldn’t back out and that the wedding would be at the end of the year. I booked it out of there less than a month later.”

 

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan said. 

 

“No shit,” Dallon said. He leaned over so that his head was resting on Ryan’s shoulder, and she very gently brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I mean, shit, can you imagine me as a dad? I couldn’t fucking do it, not at seventeen and not now. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

 

“Not everyone is meant to be a parent, though,” Ryan said, thinking about her own dad. She often wondered if it would have been better for everyone if she didn’t exist. Spencer would probably still be alive, and happily married to the love of his life. Her mom would be happy with her pedophile of a husband and their two point five kids in the suburbs. She sighed. “I don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better, but, uh, I was raped by my stepdad as a kid. And I’m trans, on top of all that.”

 

“What are we, weird parallels of each other?” Dallon said. Ryan heard him swallow, and she pressed her cheek to the top of his head. “I still hate my parents.”

 

“Me too,” Ryan said. “I don’t even know your parents, but fuck them. Fuck them both.”

 

“When I was younger, I always wanted to become some famous actor or musician or something, just to make them feel like shit for treating me the way they did,” Dallon said. “Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen, but I was a kid and I didn’t know anything about the real world and I thought anyone could be famous if they tried hard enough.”

 

“Being famous is overrated,” Ryan said. “Not that what we have is much better, but at least no one’s trying to get into our business.”

 

“It’s probably a good thing I never got famous. People’d dig up my past and then I’d get outed and shit would hit the fan and… I don’t know. But it wouldn’t be good,” Dallon said. “I bet a bunch of pro-life fucks would picket everything I did just because I got an abortion when I was seventeen.”

 

_ Ryan was standing outside of the Planned Parenthood, chain smoking and wishing she wasn’t so nervous. Jac was in there, getting rid of her and Ryan’s fetus, and Ryan wasn’t in there to make sure she didn’t back out of it. Jac’s parents were rich, and Jac was a bit of a bitch, and Ryan didn’t want Jac to hold their kid over her head. Ryan wasn’t interested in commitment, which Jac knew, but if Jac thought she could manipulate Ryan with money or threats or anything else, she’d try it.  _

 

_ Ryan’s dad was in the hospital with a failing liver, and Ryan didn’t have enough money to cover the medical expenses when she was still in school. Jac had said something about Ryan marrying her and her parents paying for Ryan’s dad’s medical shit, but Ryan wasn’t interested. Jac didn’t even want the baby; she was getting the abortion because it would piss off her parents.  _

 

_ Ryan dropped her cigarette and crouched down, vomiting. God, she was fucked up. She and Jac weren’t dating, just fucking because Ryan could get Jac drugs and Jac could get Ryan money for drugs. It was stupid. Ryan didn’t want to bring a kid into the world like that. If she was going to be a mother, she wanted to be clean and sober and she wanted her partner to be clean too. No kid deserved to grow up in a house of addicts.  _

 

_ “Are you okay?” someone asked. Ryan pushed her bangs out of her face and looked up. An older woman holding an anti abortion sign was looking down at her with concern on her face. “Oh, honey, did they do that to you?” _

 

_ “Get fucked,” Ryan spat. She stood up, ignoring how her legs were shaking under her, and shoved the woman back. “Like you know anything about this place. Go back to whatever fucked up church group you came from and leave these people alone.” _

 

_ “My goodness!” the woman said, clutching at her chest. Ryan glared her down until she slowly started backing away, repeating herself.  _

 

_ Ryan rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette. “Fuck pro-lifers.” _

 

“Fuck pro-lifers,” Ryan said, repeating something she’d said plenty of times before. Most of them weren’t really pro-life, and they only cared about controlling what women did with their bodies. The entire system was fucked up, and Ryan didn’t envy cis women at all. They got screwed over in ways Ryan would never be, because she didn’t have a uterus. “And fuck cis people too, while we’re at it. They’re all so caught up in their own bullshit that they can’t even bother to give a shit about anyone else.”

 

“Amen to that,” Dallon said, and leaned over, burying his face in against Ryan’s shoulder. “And fuck Hollywood and the American dream, too. It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit, and everyone in Hollywood is just a rich white asshole with pretty parents. It’s overrated.”

 

“It’s all overrated,” Ryan said. She leaned her head against Dallon, pressing her face into his hair. He smelled fresh, like the ocean at dawn. Ryan closed her eyes for a moment and just breathed him in, letting the wine settle down inside her and Dallon’s warmth surround her. She didn’t need to move. She didn't want to move.

 

Dallon leaned his head up, and looked at her through half-closed eyes. Up close, she could see the difference between his blue and Spencer’s blue. Dallon’s eyes were like waves, smooth, faded, gentle. There was grey moving into blue moving back into silver. Everything about him was soft, comforting, like coming home and knowing everything would be safe. Ryan had never felt that before, not even when she and Spencer had been kids and she’d stayed over at his house to get away from her own family. 

 

“You have really pretty eyes,” Dallon whispered. 

 

Ryan bit the edge of her lower lip. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”

 

Dallon dropped his gaze to her mouth for a moment, and Ryan forgot how to breathe. She hadn’t realised she wanted to kiss him, really kiss him, until now, and she was terrified. Ryan didn’t get feelings for people. She kissed them or fucked them and then when she got bored she moved on. Spencer was the only person Ryan had ever fallen in love with, and even with him, she was never sure if she was in love or if she was in love with the idea of having someone like Spencer. 

 

If Ryan had ended up with Spencer, it would have been straight out of a Nicholas Sparks novel, or a cheesy romance movie. Two outcast kids, underappreciated and unloved, fell in love after years of knowing each other and got the happy ever after they deserved. That didn’t happen with Ryan. She wasn’t the girl who starred in cheesy films. She was the ex, the embarrassing friend from the leading man’s past. She got kicked out of the picture in the first two minutes, and no one asked what happened to her in the end. 

 

Ryan was expendable, and she was looking at Dallon and realising that she didn’t want to be. She was looking at Dallon, and seeing someone just as a person, and not an escape route or a high. Dallon was Dallon, and Ryan was terrified of him and what he meant. 

 

Ryan put her hand over her mouth, and squeezed her eyes shut. She was here, in Myrtle Beach, at the same resort where she’d had her virginity ripped from her, the same resort where she and Spencer had first kissed and Spencer had cried, telling her he was afraid of liking boys. This place… it was the center of everything, and it was where all the points in Ryan’s life began and ended. And this was a new beginning, and Ryan didn’t know if she wanted it. She didn’t know if she could love, but she was, and she hated it. 

 

Falling in love with Dallon was like screwing in a light bulb directly above her head. She turned and she turned and she turned, certain that the bulb was secure, but each time she let go, the bulb fell out and crashed on the floor. Ryan was tired of breaking the bulb, but she was afraid of succeeding. What if the light startled her, or blinded her, and she got hurt? What if Dallon loved her back, and he was just as warm and bright as before? Ryan couldn’t handle the uncertainty, and it was easier to just keep sweeping up shards of glass. She knew how to deal with broken glass. She didn’t know how to deal with light.

 

Dallon reached up and put his hand over hers, looking at her. “Hey, it’s okay. Whatever you’re thinking…”

 

“I’m afraid of the light,” Ryan said. It was a dumb metaphor, but it was all she could spit out. 

 

Dallon rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb, and didn’t move away. “That’s okay. You don’t have to be in the light… whatever your light is.”

 

“I don’t want to be in darkness, though,” Ryan said. “That’s the problem.”

 

“Is a flashlight the solution?” Dallon asked, raising an eyebrow. Ryan knew he was drunk. She knew she was also drunk. She knew, despite this, that her feelings were real, and they were there. It didn’t matter that she’d only known him for a day; they were connected through tragedy, and there was potential there. 

 

Ryan slowly lowered her hand from her mouth. “If you hold the flashlight… do you promise me you won’t drop it when you see what’s out there?”

 

“No, but I can promise you I’ve seen worse, and I’ll pick it back up if I do drop it,” Dallon said. He frowned, confused. “What… exactly is this a metaphor for?”

 

“This,” Ryan whispered into their darkened hotel room, and closed the distance. Dallon’s lips tasted sweet, and he kissed her back as though he’d been waiting for this to happen, as though they both knew they were meant to kiss like this. There was no flashlight. Ryan didn’t need one. She would change the damn light bulb, glass shards and light be damned. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment/kudos, I really appreciate it!


	5. In the Morning Glory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short, because it felt like the right way to end things. I will be doing an epilogue, so that's why it say chapter 5 of 6. Trust me. Sometimes I actually know what I'm doing. 
> 
> Also, like with the first wsyict chapter, I wrote most of this on a plane. I'm currently in Salt Lake City, so if I meet/see Dallon I'll let you guys know.

Ryan woke up the next morning with her head pounding and a body pressed against her back. For a moment, she panicked, because she didn’t know where she was, but then the previous night came back to her. Dallon, and skin, everywhere, and the sound of the ocean at night harmonising with the two of them as they moaned and breathed against each other. 

 

“I feel like absolute shit,” Dallon muttered against Ryan’s bare back. Ryan must have tensed up, because he pressed a kiss to her shoulder before continuing. “Hangover. Not because we had sex. Or because of anything else we did yesterday.”

 

“You might change your mind later,” Ryan said, and turned over so that she was facing him. Outside, it was still pouring down rain, but the wind had died down for the moment. “I come with a lot of unattractive baggage.”

 

“I drive an SUV. We’ll be fine,” Dallon said. He pressed a kiss to Ryan’s collarbone, and then started kissing down her chest, between her boobs. Ryan threaded her fingers through his hair and closed her eyes. This was new. Most people were gone the morning after. Ryan supposed that Dallon didn’t have anywhere to go, what with his missing leg and this being his room and all. Still, it was nice to know that he still wanted to fuck her after they’d had sex the previous night. 

 

Dallon looked up at Ryan. “This is nice and all, but I know I have morning breath, and we should probably clean up a little before the visitation.”

 

“You’re actually going to that?” Ryan asked, snorting. She had no plan to go down to the lobby and hug a bunch of people who hated her. She didn’t need to see Mr. and Ms. Smith frowning at her and silently blaming her for their son’s death. 

 

“Yeah,” Dallon said. He pulled himself back up so that he was face to face with Ryan. “What, and you’re not? Spence was important to both of us. The least we can do is act like it.”

 

“I’m sure fucking in his honour counts,” Ryan snapped. She didn’t want this. She didn’t know what she wanted. Scratch that, she knew exactly what she wanted, but she couldn’t have any of it. Spencer was dead, and he was going to stay dead forever, and Dallon would never have feelings for her. No one did. Ryan was a sex toy at best, and she was no one’s favourite. She didn’t deserve love, not after all the things she’d let people do to her. She was disgusting, and gross, and everything that Spencer’s parents thought she was. 

 

Dallon pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her so that her chin was tucked against his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head, tenderly, like they were actually a couple and not just the result of grief and too much alcohol. “Hey, shh, you don’t have to go, okay? You don’t have to.”

 

“I want Spencer back,” Ryan managed to get out, and then she was sobbing. Ugly sobbing, the kind that involved her whole body convulsing. Dallon didn’t let go. He just rubbed her back and let her scream and cry and get angry because it wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Spencer was dead and Ryan was disgusting and Dallon should have had both his legs. Ryan dug her fingernails into Dallon’s shoulders. “I wish it was me, I wish I’d died first.”

 

“I don’t,” Dallon said, which wasn’t what Ryan wanted to hear at all. 

 

“God, fuck you, fuck you, you don’t know shit, you don’t know who we were, you don’t know what I did to him, what I am--”

 

“You’re Ryan, and you’re hurting, but this is not your fault,” Dallon said. She hated that he was so calming. She wanted him to yell back. She wanted to feel like she deserved all of this pain, because she knew she did. Dallon wasn’t giving her that, though. “Nothing that happened to you is your fault. Not your parents splitting, not your dad being a piece of shit, not your step-dad being worse, not any of it. Spencer didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t deserve to lose my leg, and you didn’t deserve any of the things that happened to you.”

 

And like a light switch, Ryan’s tears shut off, and she pulled back from Dallon to look him in the eye. She clenched her jaw and cupped Dallon’s face in her hand. “Same to you. You didn’t deserve what your Godfather did, and you didn’t deserve to get kicked out. And you deserve the best, okay? In case you weren’t sure about that, you’re a good fucking person.”

 

“Same to you,” Dallon said, and kissed her gently, slowly, like he was trying to tell her everything he’d just said again, but this time with his hands and his mouth. And Ryan let him, because she wanted to believe that he was right and she did deserve better. She didn’t, but she wanted to believe that she did. It was hard, movng forward, but Ryan knew it had to be done. No amount of mourning or screaming was going to bring Spencer back. There was nothing she could change in her life, because there was nothing that she controlled any more. She was just Spanish moss in the wind, hooked onto a tree of depression and addiction and blowing around in the winds of despair. 

 

When Ryan pulled away from Dallon, she could tell that he was crying too. She reached out and gently wiped his tears away, because she didn’t want to make him upset. She didn’t want to make anyone upset. She wanted people to love her or to hate her, and have no other feelings toward her. Indifference, pity, compassion… those were all too dangerous and Ryan didn’t know what to do with any of them. 

 

_ “I love you,” Keltie said one summer night while the two of them were fucking in the back of her car. Ryan was high on ecstacy, because she’d just been with Spencer and he didn’t have cocaine. Ryan assumed Keltie was joking, so she just winked and went back to fucking her.  _

 

_ Keltie put her hand on Ryan’s chest and made her stop moving. “Ryan, I’m serious. I’m in love with you. I want us to be something serious, like with Spencer and Brendon.” _

 

_ “I don’t want to be anything like Spencer or Brendon,” Ryan said. Keltie looked at her like she’d kicked her dog. Ryan would never kick Keltie’s dog. She’d never kick any dog, because dogs were good and they didn’t deserve to feel any kind of pain. People, though. People were assholes, and fucked up. Ryan was pretty sure she’d made the top ten list for world’s worst person. She pushed her hair out of her face. “And I dont know why you’d love me. I don’t have anything to offer.” _

 

_ Keltie frowned. She looked like she was about to start crying. She pushed away from Ryan and reached for her clothes. “Yeah. I’m starting to wonder that too. Fuck you, Ryan. I thought you were different.” _

 

I am different _ , Ryan thought as she watched her (soon to be ex) girlfriend grab all of her clothes and throw them back on.  _ Just not in the way you’d want me to be.  _ Ryan let her go, because she deserved someone who wasn’t Ryan, and once Keltie was out of the car, Ryan grabbed a cigarette and smoked it all the way down. She was still entirely naked, but it was dark out, and she was sitting in a parking lot, so she didn’t think anyone would come by. Strangely enough, she was actually right.  _

 

“I don’t know how to care about people,” Ryan said. It was a few hours later, and she and Dallon were sober and naked and sitting on the couch in the living room. Dallon had his one leg curled up, covering himself, and Ryan was stretched out with her legs under his missing one. “And don’t say I do, because I know you’re thinking it, and you’re wrong. Yes, sometimes I get attached and give a shit, but I can’t get out of my own issues long enough to invest myself in theirs.”

 

“Well, you do have a lot of issues,” Dallon said. “And you don’t have to care about people. Growing up, I was told that if I didn’t forgive the people who hurt me, no matter what they did, that I was going to end up in hell and be burned alive. And for a long time, I tried to do that, but it wasn’t healthy. It’s okay to be angry, or selfish, or sad, or anything. So much of the world tells us to shove down our bad emotions, and that’s total bullshit. Emotions aren’t bad. How you express them can be.”

 

“You mean you tried to forgive your Godfather?” Ryan asked. She looked over Dallon’s face, looking for some sign that he was lying, or joking, or trying to make her feel better about being as angry and bitter as she was. “After what he did to you? He ruined your fucking life, Dallon!”

 

“I know, and I hope he gets his by an 18-wheeler, but I didn’t always think that way,” Dallon said. He reached up and rubbed the center of his chest, about where a neckace pendant would lay if Dallon had been wearing a necklace. He wasn’t, so he was just rubbing naked skin, but Ryan could tell that it meant something. “I kind of got the impression that you weren’t raised in a religious family.”

 

“I wasn’t,” Ryan said. She only went to church when she spent the night at Spencer’s house on a Saturday. And even then, his parents didn’t go every week. They only went once a month, and sometimes not even that frequently. 

 

“The thing about some subsets of Christianity is that they get really cult-like. They teach kids from a really young age that if they don’t act a certain way, then they’re going to ruin the rest of their lives, even after they die. And you’re told to forgive people, no matter what, and that even if someone treats you like absolute shit, you can’t get mad at them, because if you do, you’re the one in the wrong,” Dallon said. He let out a long sigh, and then clenched his jaw. Ryan sat up and put her hand on his knee. Dallon opened his eyes and looked at her, and it was like looking out the window and into the heart of the sea at storm. “That wasn’t easy for me to do, but I did it for years because I thought that was what I had to do to make up for having sex before marriage. Even though it wasn’t sex, it was rape, and I wasn’t the one at fault for any of it. Religion isn’t… it isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes it really fucks people up.”

 

“The more you tell me about your old life, the more I want to go up to Pennsylvania and kick all of their asses for what they did to you,” Ryan said. 

 

“We could,” Dallon offered. “Since you don’t want to go downstairs and do funeral things anymore. We could pack up everything and just leave.”

 

“We keep talking about that, and then never doing it,” Ryan said. She looked right into Dallon’s eyes. The room was silent aside from the rain and wind pouring down outside, and she felt like she could really see him. There was Dallon, the side piece for Spencer and Brendon both. There was Dallon, the man scared of who he was supposed to be, running as fast and as far as he could until he got somewhere where he was no longer scared. There was Dallon, a seventeen year old being held down by a fully grown man, being told he wanted this, that he had no choice but to become a mother and the wife of the man who had been raping him for years. There was Dallon, damaged, hurt, and angry beyond all belief. There was Dallon, asking Ryan to run away with him, and Ryan was planning to say yes. 

 

“Then maybe we should change that,” Dallon said. “I still have carkeys.”

 

“I still have nothing to go back to,” Ryan said. 

 

Dallon leaned in and kissed her. She didn’t know what they were, other than two lost people looking for something to hold on to, but she knew they were going to be stuck with each other. There was no linear road to recovery, and no physical one, either, but Ryan was not alone, and she was not afraid of keeping Dallon around for however long it took to figure things out. 

 

Dallon cupped her face in his hands. “You know, this is going to be messy.”

 

“The sex, or the running away?” Ryan asked. 

 

“Us,” Dallon said. “Whatever we end up being. It’s going to be messy, and ugly, and not a Hallmark movie. I don’t… I don’t want you to think that just because I met you, my life is suddenly all peaches and cream.”

 

“I wasn’t expecting Hallmark,” Ryan said. “I hate Hallmark.”

 

Dallon grinned. “You know, I do too. How about that.”

 

Outside, the waves crashed against the shore, hard and unrelenting. It was cold and miserable, and on the floor below Dallon and Ryan, a group of people were standing together and mourning the loss of a beautiful soul who had lost far too much far too early in his life. They did not know about the scarred, horrid souls ramming into each other on the floor above, or how, slowly, those two people were going to pull each other up, be it through spite or love or even sheer stubbornness. Ryan and Dallon were not in love, but they didn’t have to be. Ryan didn’t want them to be in love. She just wanted them to be, and to grow and sort their shit out together. 

 

So when Dallon pulled out from under the building and into the storm, Ryan didn’t look back. She lit a cigarette for herself, and a second for Dallon, and closed her eyes to breathe in the smoke. She didn’t know where she was going. She just knew it was a change. 

 

* * *

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment/kudos if you liked it, and I'll see you guys in the epilogue!


	6. What Became of the Two Tragedies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone, hitting me with a fork: let Ryan and Dallon be happy!  
> Me, writing this and crying a little: ok ok i will!! plase leave me alone!
> 
> Anyway, here's the epilogue!

_ The house in Oregon was small, and it sat on the top of a hill, overlooking the Pacific. Ryan shivered when a breeze rolled through. She wasn’t sober, but she was considering it, because she didn’t want to end up like her dad and die too young. She and Dallon had been travelling across the country, taking odd jobs here and there, not giving a shit about a destination, until Ryan suggested they head north and see the Pacific. They’d planned to go all the way to Seattle, but then they’d met Jon, and Jon was too charming and convincing to let them keep going.  _

 

_ See, the thing was Jon had a very pregnant wife, and he and his wife wanted to get an actual house. Unfortunately, Jon was a musician and his wife was a photographer, and between the two of them, they didn’t have a lot of money. Dallon was a skilled barista and somewhat skilled baker, and Ryan wanted to go back to school and get a degree anyway. The four of them (and the baby) could pull enough funds together to buy a small duplex house.  _

 

_ It was grey blue on the outside, with two floors. Ryan and Dallon got the upper one, because they weren’t going to be parents, and Jon and Cassie got the lower one so that they didn’t have to worry about their kid falling down the stairs. Jon and Ryan, when they smoked, smoked outside so that the house wouldn’t smell. Dallon taught Cassie how to cook, because she’d been too broke in art school to afford anything but Ramen, and now that she was having a baby, she needed to know what she was doing.  _

 

_ Dallon and Ryan’s room looked out over the front yard, so Ryan got to wake up and look out at the ocean every morning. It was a reminder of how she and Dallon had started, almost a year ago. Ryan looked up at that second story window and reminded herself that she had improved from the woman she was a year ago. She was still broken and angry and all those things people told her she had no right to be, but she was getting better.  _

 

_ “Are you cold?” Dallon asked. He was on the front porch, on his crutches, and leaned against the house. He was wearing a loose turtleneck sweater, and he looked incredibly warm.  _

 

_ Ryan shook her head. “Not really. Why? Are you trying to invite me inside?” _

 

_ “You live here,” Dallon said, rolling his eyes. She did. She lived here. She finally had a home, after so many years of wandering around and not knowing where she’d end up that night. It had been better after she’d met Dallon, because at least she hadn’t been wandering alone, but it was nice to have a base level of stability.  _

 

_ “That I do,” Ryan said. She looked Dallon up and down. He looked healthier, now that they were in one final location. The burn marks and scars on his thighs were finally starting to fade away, and he’d mentioned something about going to college to figure out his life. Ryan wanted the best for him, but she wasn’t going to follow him to college. She’d learned enough in real life at this point, and going back seemed like a waste of time.  _

 

_ She crossed her arms over her chest and thought about lighting a cigarette. “Are you going to join me, or are you staying up there?” _

 

_ “It’s about to rain,” Dallon said.  _

 

_ “So?” Ryan raised an eyebrow. “That’s never stopped us before.” _

 

_ Dallon sighed and rolled his eyes. He shifted how he was standing, and then started forward, lunging down the stairs. He crossed the front yard, his hair blowing around in the wind. It was almost to the base of his neck, now, and Ryan wondered if he was going to get it cut any time soon. Dallon stopped with only a few inches between the two of them. The setting sun was painting his face a soft rose colour, and his eyes were reflecting in the glow. Ryan leaned up and kissed him, holding his face in her hands.  _

 

_ “You taste like shitty wine,” she said when she pulled back.  _

 

_ Dallon smiled. “Cas and I were making pasta. I came out here to find you and tell you it was ready, and also to ask if you wanted some of the shitty wine with dinner.” _

 

_ She ran her tongue over her lips. “No. I think I’ll pass.” _

 

“I can’t wait to get married,” one of Ryan’s coworkers, a girl who went by Z, said. She had a dumb, dreamy look in her eyes, like she was in love for the first time and young enough to still believe in it. She and Ryan were the only ones in the store, currently, since it was six PM on a Tuesday. The bookstore didn’t get a lot of traffic during the week. 

 

“I’ve heard it’s overrated,” Ryan said. 

 

“Is that why you and your boyfriend haven’t done it yet?” Z asked. Ryan could tell she was being snarky about it. 

 

Ryan rolled her eyes. “Marriage isn’t everything, Z. Sometimes people can love each other without having legal documents tying them down. And it’s not as pretty as it seems, either. Isn’t the divorce rate up to almost fifty percent now?”

 

“Doesn’t mean people shouldn’t get married,” Z said. She wiggled a pen at Ryan. “Think about it. Imagine your boyfriend was in the hospital, potentially dying, and you couldn’t see him because you two were too caught up in whatever weird shit you’ve got going on to actually get married. It’s not just about being in love. It’s about trust, and feeling at home with a person. And who cares about the divorce rate? People get divorced because they grow up, not because they stop being able to care about someone.”

 

Ryan looked at her for a moment. She couldn’t tell if Z was too naive for her age, or too wise. The girl was twenty-one, attending the local community college, and she acted like she’d seen a lot more than that. Ryan was almost thirty-six, a college drop-out, and three years sober. She shouldn’t have felt like this kid had dropped a truth bomb on her. 

 

Ryan mentally blocked marriage from her mind. It didn’t matter that she and Dallon had known each other for years and seen the ugliest parts of each other. Ryan was a child of divorce, and she’d spent too many years pining after her dead best friend to believe in soulmates or true love. She loved Dallon now, and that was why she was afraid to even think about getting married to him. Marriage felt too real. If Ryan was married, that meant she had her shit together, and Ryan definitely didn’t have her shit together. 

 

Sure, Jon and Cassie were doing fine, but they were high school sweethearts who’d exchanged fucking  _ promise rings _ at their senior prom before losing their virginity to each other. Jon and Cassie were that one statistic that ruined the study for everyone else. They had two kids and were thinking about a third one to top it off. They didn’t count. 

 

Ryan and Dallon were on the opposite end of that spectrum. They’d both met after hitting thirty, at a fucking funeral of all things, and their first time together had been when they were both drunk off their asses and mourning their mutual ex. Ryan knew how love and relationships were supposed to go, and she and Dallon didn’t have a good looking history. It didn’t matter to Ryan that they’d pulled each other up, or that Dallon hadn’t left her when she decided to get sober. It didn’t matter that Ryan had been there for Dallon when he told her about his self-harming tendencies or when he’d checked himself into a clinic on the two year anniversary of the crash because he couldn’t handle things on his own. 

 

Those weren’t signs of real love, in Ryan’s mind. They were just signs that she and Dallon could handle ugly shit. There was no proof that they could deal with the pretty things and not ruin them. She and Dallon were not pretty people. They came with scars and mistakes and pasts that couldn’t be discussed at dinner parties. 

 

Ryan sat in the front seat of her car and listened to the rain pour down outside. She lit up a cigarette, because that was the one thing she’d let herself keep. It would kill her one day, most likely, but she’d still have lived longer than she ever imagined. 

 

She looked at herself in the mirror, and took it all in. she had bangs, and her hair pulled back into a ponytail. There were a few stray pieces that had fallen out during the day, and she looked tired. She looked a lot like her mom, which was okay. Better her mom than her dad. Her mom had never hit her, she’d just looked the other way when things were happening. 

 

Ryan swallowed, thickly, and put the cigarette out. She didn’t want to start crying in her car, because that was pathetic, but apparently she was pathetic now. 

 

“I do want to marry him,” she whispered to herself and the rain. “I just don’t know if I should.”

 

_ The pouring rain barely covered Ryan’s moans or Dallon panting as he fucked her. Ryan had been cleared for “strenuous activity” three weeks ago and Dallon had been cleared four months ago. They were racing each other to the finish line when it came to transitioning, but Ryan didn’t care. This was one of the things she’d let Dallon win. He’d earned it, after all the shit he’d been through.  _

 

_ “Fuck, Ry, you’re so fucking tight,” Dallon said, thrusting into her.  _

 

_ Ryan rolled her eyes and then moaned when Dallon hit her just right. “Oh--fuck, stop acting like you’re in a porno.” _

 

_ “Just trying to spice things up,” Dallon said. Ryan could feel him grinning against her breast, and she pulled his head up so that she could kiss him properly. She loved him. She hadn’t said it, and didn’t know if she would or not, but she did. The knowledge was terrifying, but exciting, because she was starting over with everything. Dallon wasn’t Spencer, who fucked her one night and went home to his boyfriend the next. He wasn’t one of the people in Philly, who only fucked her for drugs. When Dallon and Ryan fucked, it was for fun. It was so that their bodies could be close, and so that they could feel each other.  _

 

_ Ryan looked up into Dallon’s eyes and ran her fingertips across his cheek. He hadn’t shaved in the past few days, and so his face was scratchy and uneven with stubble. She loved him. “I love you.” _

 

_ “I love you, too,” Dallon said, and leaned back down to kiss her. Any panic Ryan had been feeling subsided as soon as their lips connected, and she held onto him while he fucked her, keeping their mouths together. So she loved him, so what? He knew, and he loved her too, and it was okay. The world didn’t explode, and he didn’t laugh, and he didn’t expect things to change.  _

 

_ Ryan loved Dallon. And she cried a little when she came that night, but they were good tears, and she didn’t feel bad about letting Dallon see them.  _

 

Jon and Cassie’s kid was… odd. She was also cute, and liked painting butterflies on every surface she could find, but most of the time she was just plain weird. 

 

Ryan didn’t want kids. Falling in love with Dallon hadn’t changed that. Seeing Sagan--which was a weird name for a weird kid, and it fit--run around singing nonsense songs didn’t change that either. Ryan was fine with just being the aunt of the family. 

 

Dallon, of course, loved her. It wasn’t that Ryan didn’t love Sagan, but Dallon had latched onto her as though she was really his niece and they didn’t just tell her that to make things easier to explain. 

 

“Do you want kids?” Ryan asked him. Sagan and Jon were in the other room, and Jon was trying to teach her real songs on his guitar. Jon was a pretty good musician, but he was better in front of smaller crowds. 

 

Dallon turned his glass of water around in his hands. “...do you?”

 

“I asked you first.”

 

Dallon snorted. He was going to wait on Ryan’s answer, even though she was waiting to hear his to decide how honest to be. She was technically a mother, but she hadn’t seen her son since he’d been born and she didn’t think that would change now that she was clean and sober. Some things just weren’t meant to be, and Ryan was doing her best to be okay with that. 

 

She sighed. “I… I don’t know. I think, if you did, then I’d be okay with adopting or whatever we’d need to do, but I’m not… I’m not pursuing motherhood.”

 

“So, no,” Dallon said. 

 

Ryan frowned at him. “I didn’t say that.”

 

“I know,” Dallon said. “But you told me once that if someone didn’t really, really want to be a parent, they shouldn’t be. Raising a kid isn’t all fun and games, and sometimes it sucks ass. And I don’t want to be a shitty dad, and I don’t think you’d want to be a shitty mom, either.”

 

“So no kids then?” Ryan asked. 

 

“No kids,” Dallon said. He smiled to himself. “I was kind of hoping you didn’t want any, because I don’t think I could handle it.”

 

Ryan knew what he meant. Dallon sometimes wondered who he would have been if he’d kept his kid. There was too much baggage attached to that time in his life, though, and actually being a dad was too much of a step backwards. Dallon was Dallon now, even without a leg or a normal life. Dallon was Dallon because he knew what kind of man he could be and what kind of man he wanted to be. 

 

Ryan kissed him. “I wouldn’t make you do anything you weren’t ready for.”

 

_ Ryan vomited. She was shaky and uneven and cold. Being sober sucked, and for a very, very short moment she understood why Spencer had taken so damn long to try. Even with the support system and the stable life she had now, it was a pain in the ass to do.  _

 

_ Dallon knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay in there?” _

 

_ “I feel like shit!” Ryan sang back at him, and then laughed at herself. She looked worse than she had before she started this ordeal. It was supposed to make her look better, but she wasn’t seeing it. She was just seeing an ugly, messy bitch in the mirror. “When do I stop feeling like shit?” _

 

_ “Uh, thirty days, I think,” Dallon said.  _

 

_ Ryan closed her eyes. “Jesus  _ fuck _.” _

 

_ “I have a blanket, if you want it,” Dallon said. “I can leave it on the other side of the door, and you can come get it whenever you’re ready? Jon and I are messing around in the blackroom if you need anything, by the way.” _

 

_ “You’re wonderful,” Ryan said. She gagged and spit up again. She didn’t deserve Dallon. She really didn’t. Ryan was not an easy woman to put up with, and it turned out that being sober didn’t change that.  _

 

_ It took a few minutes, but eventually Ryan felt good enough to get up off the bathroom floor and rinse her face off. She felt like she was twenty two again, in some dirty bathroom in the back of a bar, drunk out of her mind and with her mouth fucked raw. Except, now she was thirty two, in a truly healthy relationship, and trying to get better. Ten years made a lot of difference. Ten years was a lot.  _

 

_ It was raining outside, and Ryan pulled back the curtains so that she could see it pouring down outside. She wrapped Dallon’s blanket around her shoulders and leaned her forehead against the window, closing her eyes. She was miserable, physically, but when she ignored all of that and looked inside of herself, she was happy. Not only that, but she was content.  _

 

_ When she’d been younger, she’d wanted to grow up and be a writer, or a musician, and end up in the twenty-seven club. She had imagined people writing biographies about her, trying to figure out who she wrote about, who had broken her heart. Her previous selves would be so disappointed to see where she was now, but her previous selves were fucked up. Ryan didn’t care too much about making them happy. They didn’t know what happiness actually was.  _

 

_ Happiness, it turned out, was a lot of things, but none of those involved being famous or coked up or fucking hot people. Happiness was a beaten down house in Oregon. It was a baby screaming at four in the morning and everyone slamming their fingers onto their noses so that they didn’t have to get out of bed to go calm her down. It was dancing to Elvis in the kitchen and then burning the bread because everyone was too caught up in the music to hear the timer go off. It was coming home to find a beautiful man splayed out on the couch with reruns of  _ Project Runway _ on low in the background.  _

 

_ Happiness was sitting against a window with a pounding headache and sweaty palms, listening to the rain and the sound of Dallon and Jon harmonising, and realising that the blanket around her shoulders smelled like Dallon more than anything else.  _

 

Ryan was at the mall. It wasn’t really a mall, more like a string of buildings that had wrapped themselves around a parking lot and decided they counted as a mall. It was the best thing Brookings had to offer for jewelry, and Ryan was trying to do the best. 

 

She smoked an entire cigarette before she walked into the shop, and once she was inside she regretted it. She was one of three women in here, and one of the other women was behind the counter, showing an older man some watches. 

 

“Can I help you, ma’am?” one of the men working there asked. 

 

“I’m looking for an engagement ring,” Ryan said. “For a man.”

 

“Oh, progressive,” he said, and winked as though the two of them were sharing a secret. Ryan didn’t get how her buying an engagement ring was progressive. She hadn’t even planned out a proposal, or asked Dallon if he wanted to get married. He hadn’t been interested in kids, and he seemed content with where they were now, so why the hell was she even doing this?

 

Just in case, she told herself. Just in case it ever comes up. She’d be prepared. Ryan just didn’t want to be caught off-guard, or come off as though she hadn’t thought this whole thing through. Ryan knew what she was doing. She just didn’t know when she would be doing it. 

 

The ring was simple. It was white gold, thin, with a single peridot embedded into it. Ryan had considered getting Dallon’s birthstone, but there was a tiny part of her brain that worried it wouldn’t work out and then she’d be sitting around with an emerald ring and no one to use it on. 

 

“It’s pretty sweet that you both have green birthstones,” the man said. 

 

“I guess,” Ryan said. “I hadn’t thought about it much.”

 

“It’d make for a good spring wedding theme,” he offered. Ryan nodded, and paid. She didn’t want to think about it too much. The longer she had the ring, the more ridiculous this whole thing seemed. She put the little box into her bag and pulled out her pack of cigarettes on her way out. She was smoking before she got back into the car. 

 

Ryan didn’t like driving, but she had to do it in a town like this. She’d been fine beforehand, since Dallon could drive and enjoyed doing it, but the independence was nice. She turned up the radio, letting the sound of old-school Green Day clog her brain. She could feel the ring’s presence, even though it was tucked inside a box inside her bag and she couldn’t see it. It was there. It was a reminder of what she really wanted. 

 

She wanted the domestic life she’d only ever heard about. She didn’t believe in it, but she wanted it anyway. It was like wanting to be able to fly, even though all the science said it didn’t happen. Ryan was prepared for failure, or for Dallon to look at her differently once he knew, but she had bought the damn ring anyway. 

 

_ “Ever thought about calling your mom?” Jon asked her. They were out in the backyard. Jon was supposed to be cleaning out the shed, but he and Ryan both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Cassie was destined to have to paint in the house for the rest of her life, or at least until she and Jon moved somewhere else.  _

 

_ “What would be the point of that?” Ryan said. She was sitting on an upturned bucket that had belonged to the previous owner of the house. It was from the Home Depot, and it was a garish orange colour. “I haven’t talked to her in maybe twenty years. I doubt she even remembers me.” _

 

_ “A parent never forgets their child,” Jon said.  _

 

_ Ryan rolled her eyes. “You’ve been a dad for four months. Shut the fuck up with your pseudo parent wisdom.” _

 

_ “Hey, I’m just saying, if Sagan grew up and did all the shit you did in your twenties, I’d still let her come home for Christmas when she was thirty something,” Jon said.  _

 

_ “That’s because no one can piss you off,” Ryan said. She glanced back at the house, but no one was watching to make sure that the two of them were getting anything done. “And don’t quote any of your family for evidence. I’ve met your parents. You get your forgiveness from them, just like I get my… whatever this is from my mom.” _

 

_ “Your bitterness?” Jon suggested. “Unwillingness to consider second chances? General bitchery?” _

 

_ “That’s not a word,” she said, and threw an empty bag of dirt at him. There was still some dirt left in it, and it sprayed out when she through it, covering them both in a fine dust. Ryan coughed at waved at the air around her face. “Guess that counts as karma.” _

 

_ “Yeah it does,” Jon said. He dropped the bag to the floor. “Call your mom. See what happens. If your right and she’s got your bitchery, then you can legally change your name to Walker. No one’ll even notice, since you’re a curly haired brunette and all that.” _

 

_ “I’m not short,” Ryan said, mostly to rub it in that she was about five inches taller than him. Jon flipped her off, and argued that his height was the result of being a straightedge vegan as a teenager. Ryan smirked at him. “We were exact opposites, then.” _

 

_ “Stop trying to derail my pep talk,” Jon said, straightening up. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m serious. Call your mom. I think this is one of the cases where it’s better to ask the hard questions than to let them go unanswered at all.” _

 

Ryan shoved the box into the back corner of her side of the closet. Dallon was still out, but she sent him a text to let him know she was back and that she could come get him whenever he needed her. It felt like Dallon was running a marathon, but the asshole in charge of the finish line kept moving it away from him. Last semester, he’d said he was going to graduate, but then it turned out he still needed a math class, even though he was going into English Education, not math. Ryan thought it was bullshit, and Dallon agreed with her, but that was the system he had to work with, and he was going to work with it. 

 

Ryan was so glad she’d dropped out of college when she did. It seemed like a pain in the ass. 

 

Jon had gone to a two year college and gotten a photography degree, and Cassie had her fancy ass art and design degree, but neither of them judged Ryan for not finishing school. Jon honestly thought his degree was unnecessary, given how many tutorials were out there. 

 

“Why are you in the closet?” Cassie asked. 

 

Ryan looked up. “I could make a coming out joke, but I’m pretty sure you’ve heard them all by now.”

 

“I have. Art school does that to you,” Cassie said. “Jon wanted to know if you and Dallon were down to go into town and get dinner out, since the oven decided to be a little shit and stop working.”

 

“Shit, seriously?” Ryan said, frowning. It was a good oven, too. “Can we fix it?”

 

“I’ve been trying to, but Jon keeps hovering and Sagan keeps trying to help,” Cassie said. The house was a constant DIY project, because the man who had lived here before the five of them was a little eccentric and didn’t keep his shit together. He’d died in the house, and instead of selling his stuff off in an auction, the real estate company had just marked the house as fully furnished. 

 

“I can bring them with me when I pick up Dallon?” Ryan offered. 

 

“You’re a saint,” Cassie said, and Ryan thought,  _ far from it _ , but didn’t argue back. Sometimes it was better to just smile and nod and not let people know how much she still hated herself. 

 

Ryan didn’t hate her current self, but she knew she wasn’t a good person. She’d done too many bad things to count for that. Even if the world forgot, karma didn’t, and Ryan believed in karma. She didn’t believe in much else, but she understood the concept of balance in the universe. Everything was chaos, but everything balanced out and made sense eventually. 

 

_ Ryan took a deep breath. Dallon kissed her shoulder. Ryan didn’t know why she thought calling her mom after having sex with her boyfriend, but she was doing it. She didn’t know if her mom still lived in the same house, but if she did, Ryan had her number.  _

 

_ She was a little afraid of being right.  _

 

_ The phone was ringing in Ryan’s hand. She’d decided to keep it on speaker, in case things went sour. Dallon would back her up. He wasn’t much for confrontation, but he had no issue calling people out on their bullshit.  _

 

_ “Hello, this is Danielle Bradson,” a woman’s voice said. She sounded like Ryan’s mom, but it had been too long for Ryan to be sure.  _

 

_ Ryan took another deep breath. “Hi.” _

 

_ “Who is this?” she asked.  _

 

_ “It’s uh… it’s Ryan,” she said. Dallon hooked his chin over her shoulder. “Your… your daughter.” _

 

_ “You’re really Ryan?” her mom asked. “I thought she--how do I know it’s really you?” _

 

_ “I don’t know,” Ryan said, because she hadn’t thought this through yet. “What do you want me to tell you?” _

 

_ “Who… how old were you when you told me you were a girl?”  _

 

_ “You told her?” Dallon whispered, and Ryan nodded. It wasn’t her best moment.  _

 

_ “I was eighteen,” Ryan said. “It was on senior prom, and I was drunk, and you were yelling at me for having sex with a girl, and I told you because I thought that if you were going to kick me out, you might as well know what you were kicking out.” _

 

_ “God, Ryan,” her mom said, and it sounded like she was trying not to cry. “Where have you been?” _

 

_ “Places,” she said. “Philadelphia, Myrtle Beach… I’m in Oregon now.” _

 

_ “Are you… are you happy?”  _

 

_ Ryan looked at Dallon. “Yeah. I’ve got a job, and a house with another couple. And… and I’m seeing someone.” _

 

_ “Guy or girl?” she asked.  _

 

_ “Guy,” Ryan said. “Very much a guy.” _

 

_ “And does he treat you right?” _

 

_ “Yeah, mom,” Ryan said. “He’s pretty amazing. I didn’t realise that kind of guy existed.” _

 

_ “Well, it took me two failed marriages to find the right man, so you’re doing alright on your own,” she said.  _

 

_ Ryan frowned. “You’re not with Jared anymore?” _

 

_ “No,” her mom said. Her voice sounded bitter. “Turns out he was more interested in his sons than his wife. He’s in jail now. Hopefully forever.” _

 

_ “If he ever gets out, just send me his address,” Dallon said.  _

 

_ “Who’s that?” Ryan’s mom asked.  _

 

_ “My boyfriend,” Ryan said.  _

 

_ Dallon waved at the phone, even though Ryan’s mom couldn’t see him. “Hi. I’m Dallon.” _

 

_ “Well, Dallon, that’s sweet of you, but I want you to know that if he ever does get out, I get first dibs to whoop his ass,” Ryan’s mom said. “No one hurts my babies like that.” _

 

_ Dallon kissed Ryan’s shoulder again. Ryan didn’t tell her mom that her half-brothers weren’t the only ones Jared had gotten his hands on. That was something she didn’t want to do over the phone.  _

 

_ “Ry, I know this might be a lot to ask, but would you and your boyfriend want to come home for Christmas?” she asked. “You don’t have to, but…” _

 

_ “No, mom, that’d be great,” Ryan said. Jared wasn’t there. Her mom didn’t hate her or never want to see her again. Ryan swallowed. “I’ll, uh, you can text me the address, and then I’ll have your number instead of the house phone.” _

 

_ “Sounds like a plan,” she said.  _

 

_ Ryan took a breath, and it felt like coming clean. She ended the call with her mom and put her phone away before turning to Dallon and pulling him in for a kiss. Things were okay. Things were going to be okay.  _

 

Dallon had a degree. It was the end of May, and Dallon was walking across a stage with a degree in one hand and a crutch in the other. And he had a position at the local high school waiting for him in the fall, because he was that kind of man. 

 

As soon as the ceremony was over, Rochelle found him and kissed him. The ring was still at home. She wasn’t that kind of woman. She wasn’t going to take Dallon’s day away from him and make it about them. She held his face in her hands and felt the tassel bump the side of her face. He tasted like coffee. He didn’t even drink coffee. 

 

“You’re amazing,” she said, because he was. 

 

“You’re more amazing,” he said, and wrapped an arm around her. Dallon looked down at her, and he didn’t have to say anything for Ryan to know that he loved her. He said it anyway. “I love you. This is wild.”

 

“What, that you love me, or that they finally let you graduate?” Ryan asked. 

 

Dallon rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a smartass. I was going to woo you.”

 

“You’ve already wooed me,” she said, and kissed him again. So they were being a little gross and ridiculous. So what. Dallon was living a dream of his, Ryan was discovering her own dreams, and they were safe together. For a day, their pasts were behind them, and Myrtle Beach seemed a thousand universes away. For a day, they were just another couple who had met later in life and were rolling with it. 

 

They promised to meet Jon and Cassie (and Ryan’s family, who’d come out in support) at the restaurant, and then headed back to Dallon’s car. Dallon drove far enough away that they were able to see the ocean, and then he pulled over onto the side of the road. He tossed his cap into the back seat and turned to Ryan, kissing her like he hadn’t seen her in months. He grinned against her mouth. “God, is this was normal people feel like when they finish school?”

 

“No, normal people don’t get it,” Ryan said. Normal people weren’t like them. Normal people didn’t have to run away at seventeen to get an abortion and a chance at real life. Normal people didn’t have to drop out of college to keep their dad from dying too fast. Normal people didn’t fall in love with their married friend and fuck him and then watch him die too early. Normal people didn’t appreciate life, or death, or anything. Normal people didn’t suffer. Normal people just lived. 

 

They moved to the back seat, and Dallon fucked her. He was slow, with Ryan pushing him to fucking move since they had somewhere to be. She kissed him, and ran her fingers down his back, and moaned when Dallon reached down and pinched her nipples before she came. Dallon reached between the two of them and Ryan followed his hand, fingering him until he came as well. 

 

She kissed his chest, where there were two scars that had nearly faded away. “I love you. I fucking love you.”

 

“I’d love you for the rest of my life,” Dallon said, quietly, like he was waiting for something. Ryan looked up at him. He looked scared. Dallon swallowed. “If you’d let me. Of course.”

 

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked. She sat up, resisting the urge to wrap something around herself so that she wasn’t flashing the sea. No one was out, though, and they were on the side of a tiny two lane road. 

 

“I mean…” Dallon trailed off, and his eyes dropped to his pants. “I mean I have shitty timing.”

 

“I think that’s just a part of our relationship,” Ryan said. 

 

Dallon looked back at her. “I want to marry you, Ryan. I know it won’t change who we are, or what we are, but… I don’t know. I just… when I was a kid, I always dreamed about getting married and having a house by the sea, even though originally I thought that would be on the east coast, but hey, you know, sometimes shit happens and you have to improvise--”

 

“I have a ring at the house,” Ryan blurted out. 

 

Dallon stared at her for a moment. “What.”

 

“I have a ring. An engagement ring,” Ryan said. She shook her head, because she realised that neither of them were making much sense, and if this was going to end any way other than bad, she had to get her shit together. “I bought an engagement ring, to give you, months ago, but I never did it because I didn’t think you’d want to marry me.”

 

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Dallon said, and buried his face in his hands. He was laughing. “We’re hopeless.”

 

“Hey, I was gonna propose eventually. I was waiting for the right moment,” Ryan said. “You deserved at least that.”

 

“No, no, you’re fine,” Dallon said, still behind his hands. He lowered them and reached into his pants, pulling out a box from the same jewelry store Ryan had been too. “I got this back in the fall, when I thought I was about to graduate, because I wanted to marry you but I didn’t want to have to plan around school or anything. And then they fucked up the graduation requirements, and now we’re still going to have to plan around the school year, because life just doesn’t like us.”

 

“You know I didn’t actually say yes yet, right?” Ryan said. 

 

Dallon raised an eyebrow. “You bought an engagement ring. Unless you’re planning to steal Jon and run off with him, I’m assuming it’s for me.”

 

“...you have a point,” Ryan said. She leaned in, and kissed him again. “The answer is yes, by the way. But you have to wear mine as well.”

 

“Fine,” Dallon said. “As long as it’s not ugly.”

 

_ Ryan’s mom’s new husband was nice. He was a computer programmer, and was originally from New Orleans, so he had a strong accent, but he was friendly and he didn’t ask about Ryan’s dad. He had his own daughter, who was ten years younger than Ryan and therefore around the age of her brothers, and she was expecting twins.  _

 

_ When Ryan heard that, she turned to her mom and said, “bet you didn’t expect to become a grandmother that way, huh?” _

 

_ “Well, I certainly didn’t expect kids from you,” she said. “And if either of your brothers showed up with a girl and a baby, I’d be sure to cut their dicks off.” _

 

_ “Yikes,” Dallon said from where he’d been hovering on the opposite side of the room. “Remind me to not knock you up.” _

 

_ Ryan flipped him off, for good measure. Her new step-dad laughed, and that was the final selling point. He treated her mom well, wasn’t an alcoholic or a pedophile, and he laughed at Ryan and Dallon’s slightly fucked up relationship. He was golden.  _

 

_ Christmas dinner wasn’t awkward. Well, the first few minutes, where Ryan’s half-brothers asked her and Dallon a bunch of questions. Her step-sister even asked if they were married, to which Ryan laughed. Married. As if people like her and Dallon got married. They were lucky enough to have found each other. Marriage wasn’t a thing for her. Marriage was for people who had their lives together, and weren’t only a few months sober.  _

 

_ “No, we’re not,” Dallon said. “Are you two?” _

 

_ “Soon,” her step-sister said, looking into her fiance’s eyes. “We’re getting married in January. It’s going to be a beautiful wedding.” _

 

_ “Sounds nice,” Dallon said. There was no expectation between him and Ryan. Dallon knew.  _

 

Ryan stared at herself in the mirror. She was in white, even though she was nowhere near a virgin, and her mom was behind her, adjusting her veil. She was a month shy of thirty-seven, sober, and wearing one ring on her finger. After today, there would be two. 

 

“Are you nervous?” her mom asked. 

 

“Am I supposed to be?” Ryan asked. She was nervous. Not because she was worried about marrying Dallon, but because she felt like people would be judging her. Her mom had been married three times, but that was okay because her first two husbands had turned out to be shit. Ryan was getting married this late because she’d spent too much time being a slut and a drug addict. 

 

“Yes,” her mom said. She reached up and rubbed Ryan’s shoulders. “And if you cry, don’t feel bad. I cried every time, and it was still special.”

 

“I’m not going to cry,” Ryan rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen Dallon in a suit before.”

 

“Yes, but not like this,” she said, and reached for her daughter’s hand. Ryan took it, and let her mom lead her out of the room and down the hill. They were getting married on the side of the ocean, but it wasn’t a beach. There was green everywhere, and a slight breeze picking up the ends of the waves. Ryan could see Dallon, standing in front of the officiant and looking away from the sea. 

 

Brendon was there, because he and Dallon had figured out how to be friends over the years. He had a girlfriend now, a pretty, blue-eyed girl named Sarah who’d bought Ryan and Dallon a new oven. Jon and Cassie were standing up there with Dallon, along with one of Dallon’s teacher friends, also named Ryan, and Z from Ryan’s bookstore. Z had a knowing grin on her face. She still remembered when Ryan told her marriage was bullshit. 

 

Ryan didn’t flip her off. It didn’t seem right at a wedding. 

 

Z and Cassie were wearing a soft sea green, and Jon and guy Ryan were wearing matching flowers on their suits. Jon gave Ryan a thumbs up, and Ryan’s mom smacked her hand down before she could give him one back. 

 

When Ryan finally looked to Dallon, he was holding back tears. His hands were tight around his crutches and he was looking at Ryan like he’d never seen her before and she was the best thing he could ever see. He was beautiful. Ryan wanted to go blind after this, so that she never saw anything other than Dallon, backed up against the Pacific. 

 

Ryan’s mom let go of her, and she walked up to face him. She swallowed. She wasn’t going to cry at her own wedding. That was such a cliche. 

 

Dallon reached up and rubbed his eyes. “Ry, I love you. I know I’m supposed to have a beautiful speech made up to share how I love you, but you already know. I have loved you from South Carolina to a small town in Pennsylvania where you taught the uglier parts of anatomy to my relatives. I have loved you in Kansas and in Milwaukee, when we lived out of hotel rooms and almost got arrested because my license plate expired. I’ve loved you in California, and in Brookings, Oregon, and I’ll love you wherever we get dragged to next. I don’t have fancy words, or poetry, and I should, because I teach English to a bunch of eighth graders who think I’m pretentious, but I don’t. I just love you, and I want to keep loving you.”

 

Ryan was crying. God fucking dammit. She wiped her own face. “Dal. First of all, fuck you for making me cry at my own wedding and giving my mom something to gloat over. Second, I love you. I love you, and I love that you’ve managed to adopt about a hundred teenagers without dragging me into it, and I love that you want to go skiing in Canada all because you found out they have a disabled skiing program. I love that you make up songs for everything, and that you still cry when dogs die in movies. And most of all, I love that you love me, despite all the shit I’ve put you through, and all the times you could have given up. We’re here, despite what everyone else expected, and despite what I thought would happen.”

 

“I love you,” Dallon said again. He didn't need to. Ryan knew it. 

 

“Dallon James Weekes, you’ve just told the world how much you love Ryan,” the officiant said. He sounded a little choked up. Ryan didn’t know who he was. She was pretty sure Jon and Cassie had just pulled him off the internet. “Now, do you take Ryan Marie Ross to be your wife?”

 

“Yes,” Dallon said. He tapped his ring against hers. “I do.”

 

“And Ryan Marie, do you take Dallon James Weekes to be your husband?”

 

Ryan tapped back. “I do.”

 

“Then, by the powers vested in me and in the wonderful state of Oregon, I now pronounce you two husband and wife,” the officiant said. “I’m sure youve done it many times before, but Dallon, you may now kiss your bride.”

 

Dallon actually let go of his crutches and kissed her. Ryan tossed her flowers aside and kissed him back, because why the hell not. There were people there who could pick that up. She just wanted to kiss her husband, now that that was a thing she could call him. 

 

Behind them, the waves crashed against the rocks. Waters splashed up, spraying into a thin mist around them. Ryan shivered a little, pulling Dallon in closer. She was dressed in all white, and she would never have to do that again. She could hear her mom crying a little, and she knew it was a good thing. There were very few things in Ryan’s life that she knew to be constant. Pain and suffering was one of them, but now… now Dallon was another, and Dallon was much better than anything else the world could offer her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading this, guys! Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed, and if you want to talk about this fic (or anything, it's whatever), come say hi to me on tumblr @throamspallon!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to express your emotions in comments/kudos!


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